Bug 836154

Summary:	should use lower pre-gain
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Karel Volný <kvolny>
Component:	pulseaudio-equalizer	Assignee:	Hicham HAOUARI <hicham.haouari>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	17	CC:	hicham.haouari
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Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
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Last Closed:	2013-08-01 00:36:29 UTC	Type:	Bug
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oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Embargoed:

Description Karel Volný 2012-06-28 08:56:58 UTC

Description of problem:
The equalizer offsets the volume too high which leads to distortion for any band that is set above 0 dB in the equaliser (if the sound source is loud enough in that band).

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
pulseaudio-equalizer-2.7-9.fc17.noarch

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
0. use some good soundcard, amplifier and loudspeakers/headphones to eliminate possible problems caused by the low quality of hardware
1. run pulseaudio-equalizer-gtk
2. set some bands amplification above zero - for example +10 dB on 50 Hz and 100 Hz bands
3. play some music you know to be distinct in those bands - in the bass example, you may use e.g. Ace of Base - The Sign (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqu132vTl5Y)

  
Actual results:
the sound is distorted

Expected results:
the sound is clean

Additional info:
I wonder if this is the same issue as bug #711152 ... however,
1) I wouldn't describe it like "Sound is distorted beyond comprehension" - it's more like a simple overdrive
2) if I understand that issue correctly, the distortion happens always when using the equaliser; for me, it happens only if I pull the sliders above zero, when set to zero or below, I cannot hear any distortion

Comment 1 Karel Volný 2012-06-28 09:53:33 UTC

looking into console output, I see there is:


Transferring current mute (0) & volume (50%) to LADSPA sink (ladspa_output.mbeq_1197.mbeq)...                                                                                                                  
Setting ALSA sink (alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo) preamp (1.0x)...                                                                                                                                
Setting LADSPA sink (ladspa_output.mbeq_1197.mbeq) as default sink...                                                                                                                                          
Moving active PulseAudio clients to LADSPA sink (ladspa_output.mbeq_1197.mbeq)...



I've tried to modify the config file ~/.pulse/equalizerrc and set the fourth line, which seems to correspond to the preamp value, to 0.01, then to -10, and it doesn't have any effect on the volume

so it looks like the problem is here, that it a) doesn't get applied b) the default value is nonsense, it should be less than 1 to make room for the corrections


note, I see that LADSPA mbeq_1197 is used ... if it was pure ALSA solution then another plugin amp_1181 would be chained ... don't know how with pulseaudio though ...

Comment 2 Hicham HAOUARI 2012-06-28 11:43:49 UTC

Thanks Karel for reporting this bug.

I disabled preamp back at bug #639604.

You can try to rebuild it without the patch and see if it solves your problem.

For reference the patch is :

http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/gitweb/?p=pulseaudio-equalizer.git;a=blob;f=pulseaudio-equalizer-2.7-remove-preamp.patch;h=5a1dcc32aedeed8a36a271b1b49bbbc153a3f90e;hb=HEAD

Comment 3 Karel Volný 2012-06-29 08:36:14 UTC

(In reply to comment #2)
> You can try to rebuild it without the patch and see if it solves your
> problem.

unfortunately not, pulling the "preamp" slider just messes with the main volume ... hm, I see you mention this behaviour in bug 639604 comment 2

Comment 4 Fedora End Of Life 2013-07-03 22:36:49 UTC

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Comment 5 Fedora End Of Life 2013-08-01 00:36:33 UTC

Fedora 17 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2013-07-30. Fedora 17 is 
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