HOWTO: PulseAudio Fixes & System-Wide Equalizer Support

[-kg-]

As this thread is much too large to read through and see if this has been addressed already, I will mention this just as a matter of curiosity.

I was going through my .asoundrc file to attempt to adjust the equalization and, of course, came on these lines:

#this setting is here by example, edit to your own taste
       #bands: 50hz, 100hz, 156hz, 220hz, 311hz, 440hz, 622hz, 880hz, 
       #       1250hz, 1750hz, 25000hz, 50000hz, 10000hz, 20000hz
       #range: -70 to 30
        controls [ -1 -1 -1 -1 -5 -10 -20 -17 -12 -7 -6 -5 -5 0 0 ]

As it was rather difficult for me to associate the frequency bands with the control settings for each, I put in a couple of extra comment lines to associate the two with each other:

  #bands: 50hz, 100hz, 156hz, 220hz, 311hz, 440hz, 622hz, 880hz, 1250hz, 1750hz, 25000hz, 50000hz, 10000hz, 20000hz
  #        -1     -1    -1     -1     -5     -10    -20    -17    -12      -7      -6       -5       -5        0       0

There are 14 frequency bands listed, but 15 control numbers. I know this is almost a non-issue in the larger scheme of things, but just out of curiosity, what is the missing frequency band?

[jamesisin]

Just a guess, but is the extra control a master control (like a main volume within the EQ)? Many EQ's have a master control in addition to the frequency adjustments. You could test this by turning the two far ends (it's gotta be one of 'em) very low and see if your volume drops.

[RezoApio]

Hi there.

On my Dell XPS M1730, I have managed to get the mike working after reading this post and many others.

However I have a problem which is the following. The pulseudio server sees only the capture that corresponds to the webcam mike.
The line mike is not recognized. Even if I plug the mike before restarting the machine.

No a very big issue but I would like to get to understand this completely.

Also the PC has 2 jacks for earphones but only one is working. And even when plugged the pavucontrol stills says it is the main board that has the sound.

And it also seems that I have no stereo in this configuration...

Sorry if some of this has been reveiwed in the post before but it is way too long to read entirely...

Thanks anyway

[wmatthews]

Perfect explination of everything. I have a feeling that I am going to be very happy with PulseAudio.

[Gorstak]

I followed instructions from first post but on my 5.1 sound card I got sound only from front speakers. I edited default-sample-channels = 6 in etc/pulse/daemon.conf and now other speakers works but not front ones.

[EDIT]

It's working now, I have two nearly identical sound cards and they have same name so system mixer got confused and never allow me to adjust cards precisely. I installed gnome-alsa-mixer and now I have full control.

[meredeth]

ok, i got as far as the end of part a, and things went awry.

first things first: i am using hardy heron, 8.04, custom kernal by adam, for my asus eee pc (i686 i think). i'm fairly certian i have followed this thread's instructions successfully once already, but today when i tried to access the pulseaudio volume control it told me connection refused. so i thought, maybe that was before my (fairly recent) reinstall, and i set about following this thread's instructions again. however, when i was told to launch the device chooser at the end of part a, an error box popped up again, connection refused. i tried what was suggested (the manual launching via the terminal) and was again greeted with "connection refused." the terminal told me:

[1] 7607
W: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_NICE, (31, 31)) failed: Operation not permitted
W: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_RTPRIO, (9, 9)) failed: Operation not permitted
E: main.c: Unknown command: als#!/usr/bin/pulseaudio -nF
E: main.c: Failed to initialize daemon.
[1]+ Exit 1 pulseaudio

in accordance with the wishes of the thread i now post the output of aplay -l:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC269 Analog [ALC269 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

and the output of pkill pulseaudio; sleep 2; pulseaudio -vv:

I: main.c: Called SUID root and real-time/high-priority scheduling was requested in the configuration. However, we lack the necessary priviliges:
I: main.c: We are not in group 'pulse-rt' and PolicyKit refuse to grant us priviliges. Dropping SUID again.
I: main.c: For enabling real-time scheduling please acquire the appropriate PolicyKit priviliges, or become a member of 'pulse-rt', or increase the RLIMIT_NICE/RLIMIT_RTPRIO resource limits for this user.
I: main.c: Note that real-time/high-priority scheduling is NOT normally required. If you experience crackling or other sound anomalies, consider one or more of the above solutions.
I: main.c: High-priority scheduling enabled in configuration but now allowed by policy. Disabling forcibly.
W: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_NICE, (31, 31)) failed: Operation not permitted
W: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_RTPRIO, (9, 9)) failed: Operation not permitted
I: main.c: This is PulseAudio 0.9.10
I: main.c: Page size is 4096 bytes
I: main.c: Fresh high-resolution timers available! Bon appetit!
E: main.c: Unknown command: als#!/usr/bin/pulseaudio -nF
E: main.c: Failed to initialize daemon.
I: main.c: Daemon terminated.

thanks so much for any assistance you might render. (^_^)

~meredeth.

[jamesisin]

Meredeth - I saw the same issue at some point. I ended up just rebooting my system. My .dmrc & home directory also lost their appropriate permissions. I fixed that permissions issue, ran through these instructions again, and everything eventually sorted itself out. Maybe that will help you.

[-kg-]

Just a guess, but is the extra control a master control (like a main volume within the EQ)? Many EQ's have a master control in addition to the frequency adjustments. You could test this by turning the two far ends (it's gotta be one of 'em) very low and see if your volume drops.

That wasn't it. I changed both ends one at a time all the way to the lowest indicated setting (-70) and logged in/out in case I needed to to put the settings in effect, and neither of them decreased the volume at all.

A good thing I did, though, because I like the sound a little better with those settings lowered. I raised them a bit and lowered one other in the higher end of the band, so it should not be too bad for this particular sound system (Toshiba laptop with Harmon Kardon speakers).

Like I said, I was just curious. I may do a little more experimentation with it later on and see if I can further fine-tune it.

Thanks!

[jamesisin]

My prescription for EQ experimentation. First, a good audio system won't need one. Ok, that being said...

The best way to adjust an EQ is to start flat (all in the middle position) and make slight adjustments at each frequency reaching toward the desired effect (either up or down). You will want to make the smallest overall adjustment possible so as to retain as much of the original sound as possible.

Note: an EQ is not a volume boost. If all of your settings are above the midline, lower them until the average is at the midline (otherwise you merely run the risk of overdriving a system).

Since there is some question about what these settings actually do, I would probably begin with all of them all the way down and test each setting to see what it actually covers. This will help you when you make your adjustments.

This might also help reveal what that extra virtual slider is all about.

There you have my two cents and then some.

[otakuj462]

Pulseaudio still completely fails for me after applying these instructions on Hardy 8.04.1.

I'm currently trying to reverse the instructions (and go back into Kubuntu/aRts which happens to work great), and there's something I'm getting stuck on. I've removed the following lines in /etc/apt/sources.list:

And I've done and apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade. Nothing appeared to have changed after that, and so I attempted to reinstall libasound2 in order to roll it back to the previous version. Here are the results of that:

# PulseAudio Fixes - http://ubuntuforucob@rhino:~$ sudo apt-get install --reinstall libasound2
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reinstallation of libasound2 is not possible, it cannot be downloaded.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
jacob@rhino:~$
ms.org/showthread.php?t=789578
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/psyke83/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/psyke83/ubuntu intrepid main

How do I correctly roll back my alsa packages to the state they were in before adding those two lines to sources.list?

I'd greatly appreciate any guidance anyone can offer. Thanks,

Jake