Linux Audio Is Being Further Modernized With The 4.1 Kernel

[grok]

Here on an ubuntu 14.04 derivate I didn't find a pulseaudio equalizer in the packages (with apt-cache search), but as expected there's a number of LADSPA plug-ins (and/or LV2) ; there's an ALSA plug-in (which uses a LADSPA one) that I might as well try first.
Relative to pulsaudio, of note is a package called pulseaudio-module-jack, which does what it says on the tin.

[tomtomme]

I'm in the same boat. I'd really, really like some plugins that come with pulseaudio or alsa that can be toggled easily and doesn't randomly deci- KRSRHSRHRSH

huh?
afaik the pulseaudio-equalizer is what you are searching for, isn?t it? to me it looks like the official pa-equalizer and is just not installed by default on my distro (opensuse). but it is in the official main repository and works fine here.

[Sundance]

I'm sure some great Jack + PA configuration could be made where pulseaudio feeds to Jack, a program does real-time EQ and audio is either output to sound card (ALSA) or fed back to pulseaudio, but until a major distro offers that out of the box or until it's easy to set that up I won't bother.

It's not hugely complicated if you use the right tools.

For anything Jack: use Cadence from the KXStudio project. Seriously, it's awesome, and makes setting up Jack and all the bridges you will need (in particular the PulseAudio bridge) a breeze. Yes, I did just use the words "a breeze" in the context of setting up Jack.

Once you've set Jack and the PulseAudio bridge to start automatically, go into the Tools tab of Cadence, and start Catia, the Jack patchbay from KXStudio. There you should see sources and sinks for your hardware, plus a source and a sink for PulseAudio. Cadence should have automatically routed the PulseAudio source to the hardware sink (and vice versa if you have a microphone). Bam, you've got Jack + PulseAudio running together smoothly. Just tell PulseAudio clients to use the Jack sink, for instance in the Volume Control application (a.k.a. pavucontrol).

Now install and start Carla, KXStudio's Jack plugin host, and add to the rack any equalizer plugin you fancy, like C* Eq10X2 (available in the 'caps' package from the KXStudio repos). The plugin will appear in your patchbay. Or if you want some extra equalizing badassery, install Jamin. Now unplug the PulseAudio source from the hardware sink in the patchbay and instead route every channel through the plugin (so it goes PulseAudio source -> equalizer plugin -> hardware sink). Bam, done.

The above took much longer to type out than to do. Try it! It's fun! There are craptons of free LADSPA plugins out there that do all manners of cool shit. Nowadays, Linux audio is cool.

Oooor, you know, just load the equalizer module that comes natively with PulseAudio. It DOES lack a good GUI, but look up qpaeq, it does the job.

[profoundWHALE]

I am basically begging for an EQ to prevent permanent damage to my hearing.
I had a basic one (bass/treble) when using Windows XP + sound blaster live or audigy + kxdriver, but I can't really go back to that. a DJ mixer would fix that but it costs about 100 euros and takes room.

I'm in the same boat. I'd really, really like some plugins that come with pulseaudio or alsa that can be toggled easily and doesn't randomly deci- KRSRHSRHRSH

[grok]

You can at least remap channels by putting things in /etc/pulse/default.pa

e.g. I added this to get a virtual sink which mixes stereo sound to mono (useful to get mono on both speakers, or if you're using only one speaker)

load-module module-remap-sink master=alsa_output.pci-0000_04_04.0.analog-stereo sink_name=mono channels=2 channel_map=mono,mono

It should be easy to map stereo to four speakers (front left/right plus rear left/lright), if you wish to do 5.1 that seems a lot harder though. (perhaps there's something, perhaps not)

----------

And here I lament a general lack of pulseaudio plugins : I once wanted a pulseaudio equalizer, which sounds easy and useful enough.
I had to hunt for it on the web, perhaps wait for a year so one becomes available and then I finally found an unofficial one (packaged in some guy's ubuntu ppa I believe). Yea, awesome it works!, lots of EQ bands like on some music players.

But it worsened the sound in subtle or not subtle ways (cracking). Then it was not maintained anymore, so when upgrading the OS, it was unavailable.
I don't fault the author for trying and failing, but it was a bit sad.

I'm sure some great Jack + PA configuration could be made where pulseaudio feeds to Jack, a program does real-time EQ and audio is either output to sound card (ALSA) or fed back to pulseaudio, but until a major distro offers that out of the box or until it's easy to set that up I won't bother.
I also just use stereo and speakers. Even there, if I use an amp without treble/bass controls, my ears are physically hurting because of the powerful and clean trebles I can't turn down a little.

I am basically begging for an EQ to prevent permanent damage to my hearing.
I had a basic one (bass/treble) when using Windows XP + sound blaster live or audigy + kxdriver, but I can't really go back to that. a DJ mixer would fix that but it costs about 100 euros and takes room.

[Azrael5]

How to enable surround effects on pulseaudio so that every channel of speaker system reproduces the specific sound (on youtube for example)? I use xonar d2x able to simulate surround sound form stereo source.

[Sundance]

By the way, in my meager personal experience, I never had any configuration/use problem with PulseAudio on my five different computers, since several years. Admittedly though, I don't "work" audio so I never had any need to study the latency issues.

PulseAudio is not the right tool for "working" audio in the first place. But it does cooperate beautifully with Jack nowadays. Their respective dev teams are absolutely aware that they make different tools aiming to serve different purposes, and are happy to work together so their software can coexist smoothly. (It's users, not the developers, that pit PA against Jack like they're not apple and orange, for some reason.)

These days, you can set up your system so when you start up Jack, it pokes PA, PA nods and automatically releases the physical device; Jack then grabs the device, and PA plugs itself into Jack instead and keeps running happily as a Jack client.

So all your desktop applications that use PA keep running, none the wiser, and your audio production tools and patchbays can talk to Jack directly to do their thing.

You can do some pretty cool stuff these days. Play vids on one computer and output the sound to a different computer where you pass it through a vocoder filter before sending it up to your coworkers on Hangout, all thanks to PA and Jack working hand in hand smoothly. Can you tell I love this?

[Citan]

Windows 7/Vista/8/8.1 still doesn't have real per-application control

You mean that thing Windows 7, maybe Vista, has? For years?

Hi all!

I don't post very often, but I felt compelled to react to such a false truth...

YES, you can alter the volume of an "existing" (aka currently running) application in Windows. But... That's all.

You CANNOT, through Windows, alter the input/output device to which send audio flux "on the fly". Only way to do that is 1. Select "default audio device" as being A. 2. Launch desired set of applications. 3. Select "default audio device" as being B. 4. Launch anothet set of desired applications. This is astonishingly stupid and cumbersome for a 2014 OS.

In Linux (with KDE), since at least 5 years, I can change on the fly the ouput/input of any running application to go from speakers to headphone, or go from headphone mic to integrated mic, as often as I wish with only two mouse clicks.

What the point may you ask?
1. You're playing a game on speakers, someone comes in the room and wants to watch TV > get it on your headphones.
2. You were having a discussion on Jabber/Hublin on your wireless headphones and battery runs out (or maybe you want everyone besides you to hear and speak altogether) > transfer on laptop's mic.
3. You use your PC as a media center, plugged on speakers. You want to play a game, your wife wants to listen music (or maybe watch on-pc TV) >>> Easy!

None of these simples use-cases is easily achievable on Windows.
By the way, in my meager personal experience, I never had any configuration/use problem with PulseAudio on my five different computers, since several years. Admittedly though, I don't "work" audio so I never had any need to study the latency issues.

[GraysonPeddie]

/etc/openal/alsoft.conf

with following parameter...

drivers=alsa

Thanks. That takes care of it. Now to make Google Chrome not use PulseAudio and use JACK and snd-aloop.

[Sundance]

Is this an innate hardware limitation, or are the drivers just coded too simplistically? Ie., are those drivers fixable?

My understanding is that it's a driver issue. You would probably have to ask the PulseAudio people for in-depth explanations, though, since they're the ones having to deal with these problems.