HOW TO: Equalize You Music

[ENigma885]

It's just a mini "How to" to show u how to experience a new equalized taste of ur music. Oriented specially to the 4-only-colors-so-called OS migrants who used to use SRS Audio Sandbox. It can also help laptop users for specific amplification and equalizing.



What you will need :-

1- Audacious (1.5.1 preferred)
2- Audacious Plugins, Ubuntu splits them into Plugins and Extra-plugins, (1.5.1 also preferred)
3- LADSPA plugins

- For the Audacious parts they are available by default in the Intrepid repository and for Hardy users only 1.5.0 is available but u can compile it from source or download ready made 1.5.1 debianized packages as follows:
I- Download and install libaudid3tag1 1.5.1 from HERE
II- Download and install libaudclient1 1.5.1 from HERE
III- Audacious Plugins 1.5.1 from HERE
IV- Audacious 1.5.1 from HERE
V- Audacious Plugins Extra 1.5.1 from HERE

Thanks to GetDeb

- For the LADSPA u can install them by

sudo apt-get install swh-plugins ladspa-sdk

Next Step :-

- By now u should have a working Audacious and its plugins installed.

1. Configure Audacious to use PulseAudio
- As Hardy uses PulseAudio as a sound server we have to configure Audacious to use PulseAudio output to avoid conflicts.
Launch Audacious >> RightClick and Preferences >> Audio from the left menu >> Audio System >> Select PulseAudio Output Plugin.

2. Audacious Effects Plugins
- From the same Preferences menu select Plugins from the left menu >> Switch to Effects tab.
- Enable Crystalizer, not available in 1.5.0,
- Enable Extra Stereo Plugin
To configure the plugin select it then click Preferences "down"

Advice I - The values of Crystalizer and Extra Stereo plugin are dependent on ur audio quality (mp3 bitrate for example), the type of music (Metal, Techno, Pop..etc), and ur speakers capabilities. But an average value of 1.7 for both of them is just fine.

3. Configure LADSPA plugins
- From the Effects tab in Plugins, enable LADSPA Host. Select it then Preferences to configure it.
- You will find a huge number of plugins. I tried many of them and the most effective ones and really usable are;
a- C* Eq2x2 - stereo 10-band equalizer
b- Stereo Amplifier
c- DJ EQ
d- Multiband EQ
e- Surround Matrix encoder
and to get them to work select the plugin name from the left menu (Installed plugins) and click Add "down", it should be copied to the right menu (Running plugins). And for each "running" plugin u can configure also from the Configure button "down". You can run them altogether for best results.

Advice II - For Stereo Amplifier an average value of 1.2 is pretty good.
- The DJ EQ plugin offers a simpler and easier way to control over low, mid and high bands presented in other plugins by many separated bands.
- You can try other plugins for fun and then select them from the right menu and click Remove "down" to stop them. examples could be Multivoice Chorus and C* Click - Metronome.

Advice III - When using equalizer parts remember
a- Lower Frequency bands (≈ 16 - 200 Hz) control bass and low pitched voices. Mainly these voices can be physically felt by other senses than hearing.
b- Higher Frequency bands (≈ 8000 Hz = 8 KHz - 16 KHz) control brilliance and high pitched voices.
c- Between the two extremes mid voices lay. Like intelligible human speech (≈ 512 - 2048 Hz)
- As we r talking here about digital amplifying, higher equalizer bands values can cause distortion and clipping. so avoid high values completely!
and if u want to increase the level of a certain frequency u'd better decrease other values and raise ur speakers volume if rising that certain frequency causes distortion.
- For additional adjustments u can enable the Audacious built-in equalizer.

Advice IV - it's off topic, but u have to check other Audacious plugins from the General plugin tab, not considered with output, ..specifically;
a- Audacious OSD 0.1beta5
b- Global Hotkey
c- Status Icon 0.5