I listen to some bass-heavy music. I recently got some new headphones. (Sony xb500) I know the limits of these headphones. I first tried them out on my phone and they sounded great. I used Pandora as well as some streaming music from the internet.
The problem arises when I listen to (pretty much) anything except the web-based version of Pandora. The bass is really distorted, as if the speakers were clipping. However I know they're not, so I think it's software-related. I think it's important to note that I'm using pulseaudio-equalizer to boost the bass. I have 9 different presets, each with higher bass than the previous one. I can listen to a bassy song on Youtube with preset 7 and it would sound significantly more distorted than if I'd listened with Pandora.
But here's where it gets confusing; it's not Pandora itself that reaches the full potential of my headphones, just something about the web-based version. I listened in Pithos, which is a desktop app, and the bass still sounds distorted.
I would very, very much like to fix this problem. I'm willing to try anything. I know little about how Pulse works, so I can't diagnose this myself.
I have used both the PulseAudio with the jack detection fix (from this PPA) and the Pulse in the Oneiric repos. (v1.0) They both have this problem. I'm using equalizer version 2.7.0.2-2. (Maybe there's a better EQ that I should be using? Not really up-to-date on this stuff.) Any tips or help is appreciated. Thanks.
P.S. If we eliminate Pandora as a variable, what can one do about distorted bass with Ubuntu in general?
Bookmarks