PulseAudio Plugin Allows For Better Bluetooth Audio Quality On Linux

[caligula]

Note that it's Loudness Equalization that's highlighted... as in "We're sick of having to constantly juggle the sliders in pavucontrol or kmix as we move from YouTube video to YouTube video (some of which need to be boosted beyond 100%, which YouTube's own volume slider can't do) while simultaneously keeping notification sounds from things like IM clients at the right volume."

Eh, ok didn't realize they're messing with terms so badly. The music industry has decades of experience withthis loudness equalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_compensation
The one Microsoft uses seems more like dynamic compression.

[ssokolow]

Eh, ok didn't realize they're messing with terms so badly. The music industry has decades of experience withthis loudness equalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_compensation
The one Microsoft uses seems more like dynamic compression.

You may be right, but you're the first person I've met who didn't expect dynamic range compression out of that setting. (I haven't tried it myself because I was a full-time Linux user by the time it came around.)

[microcode]

You may be right, but you're the first person I've met who didn't expect dynamic range compression out of that setting. (I haven't tried it myself because I was a full-time Linux user by the time it came around.)

I certainly expected it to be some actual loudness-weighted DRC.

[microcode]

In response to all this, I'm prototyping embedding Opus in A2DP (the pulse side based on this code, for now). I've looked at some benchmarks from the Rockbox documentation, and run some of my own, and it seems like the Opus decoder is generally about as fast as a good quality AAC-LC decoder on a generic RISC microcontroller; so it seems plausible that decoding Opus instead of AAC-LC on the classes of A2DP devices which currently support AAC-LC is highly doable. My cute little corporation is joining the Bluetooth SIG as well, to see if I can refine it with them and get it listed as a standard optional part of the next A2DP (and if not, at least get the assigned numbers to do it as a consistent Vendor codec). Waiting for the Bluetooth modules to arrive in the mail (my old ones, as it turns out, are too slow for any A2DP), and will be able to start on the device side as well.

I'm finding Opus has a whole lot of excellent qualities for an A2DP device. Opus can change frame size mid-stream, and the latency can be tuned vs. efficiency smoothly and intuitively (on an Android device, there's also a lot of metadata in the framework which could help make these decisions automatically). The range of useful data rates is also spectacular, and could make for some really good QoS functionality (though I'm not sure precisely how feasible that is within the A2DP profile as it stands, it might be more than it can currently do).

I'm fired up to do this because on the way home I was just trying to listen to some music, and in some types of transit vehicle (and, for whatever reason, not others) it would just completely drop out every 20-30 seconds, no doubt because it was trying to push almost 400kbps of craptastic SBC on a very unreliable connection.

[caligula]

You may be right, but you're the first person I've met who didn't expect dynamic range compression out of that setting. (I haven't tried it myself because I was a full-time Linux user by the time it came around.)

Well most PC users I know always turn on the bass & treble boost as much as possible so I'd assume they want the other type of loudness settings too.

[ssokolow]

Well most PC users I know always turn on the bass & treble boost as much as possible so I'd assume they want the other type of loudness settings too.

My point is that you're the first person I've met who would see that option name and relate it to bass and treble boost, rather than dynamic range compression.

[Maslou]

I tried and tested the operation of all sound transmission modules. We have ready packages from the repository for UVUNTU: https://github.com/EHfive/pulseaudio-modules-bt

[caligula]

My point is that you're the first person I've met who would see that option name and relate it to bass and treble boost, rather than dynamic range compression.

Well, I don't use Windows and have 30 years of experience with high fidelity audio equipment?

[dwagner]

My point is that you're the first person I've met who would see that option name and relate it to bass and treble boost, rather than dynamic range compression.

I, too would have assumed that the "loudness" button enables loudness compensation as described in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_compensation - for simply the fact that almost every HiFi amplifier has/had a button labeled "loudness" for that purpose.

My (many years old) amplifier has another button for what you are after, which is labeled "dynamic range compression".

[ssokolow]

I, too would have assumed that the "loudness" button enables loudness compensation as described in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_compensation - for simply the fact that almost every HiFi amplifier has/had a button labeled "loudness" for that purpose.

My (many years old) amplifier has another button for what you are after, which is labeled "dynamic range compression".

Yes, but there are far more people who have computers than who ever had HiFi amplifiers.

I'm honestly really surprised that Microsoft gave such a vague description for it, given that potential for uncertainty in what it actually does.