Is there any Sound enhancers/equalizer?

Question

What I am looking for is to have system wide implementation of sound enhancements like bass boosts, echoes, Fidelity, Stereo enhancement and so on.

Audio Video players have their own equalizer but they enhance only the audio / video files they are playing.

So to enhance sounds playing such as: YouTube, Spotify, System Sound, etc. I need a enhancer software. Back in Windows, I used to use SRS HD audio lab to do the same.

P.S. I have a horrible Speaker set.

Related: Is there a way of leveling/compressing the sound system-wide? and How can I apply a LADSPA plugin to a PulseAudio stream? — ændrük, Oct 27 '11 at 05:13
Throw away pulseaudio equlizer! USE THIS https://github.com/wwmm/pulseeffects much better sound — Georgy Gobozov, Mar 18 '18 at 07:57

score 211 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 08 '18 at 18:59

211

PulseAudio Equalizer is the way to go.

Here’s a blog post about it: http://www.webupd8.org/2013/10/system-wide-pulseaudio-equalizer.html

Since pulseaudio-equalizer is part of Ubuntu 17.04, you can simply enable the universe repository and then issue the installation command:

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio-equalizer

For older releases, add the PPA first:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update

Are PPAs safe to add to my system and what are some "red flags" to watch out for?

After PulseAudio Equalizer is installed, you can launch its GUI with the applications qpaeq or pulseaudio-equalizer-gtk.

PulseAudio Multiband EQ window

edited Feb 08 '18 at 18:59

David Foerster

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answered Oct 27 '11 at 04:55

greg

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This is what i wanted. Sadly i see they have discontinued it.I was hoping to see this expanded and integrated to ubuntu – user15873 Oct 27 '11 at 07:10
@user15873 it may be no longer supported but it works really well all the way up to 11.10. Those 3 commands in terminal will get you a fully functioning, system wide equalizer. – greg Oct 29 '11 at 21:53
5

I did this and it had too many quarks with too little improvement to sound quality. Unfortunately, when I removed it via CLI I also did the recommended "autoremove". Now, after a restart, I have no sound menu indicator and don't know how to get it back. I would use this the pulse-audio eq with caution. – jwdinkc Oct 31 '12 at 18:15
@Takkat Pulseaudio has support for built in equalizer, but it is not enabled in ubuntu (Why?). How do I enable it by recompiling pulseaudio from source (12.04 & 12.10)? – Khurshid Alam Dec 30 '12 at 11:48
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See http://www.webupd8.org/2013/03/install-pulseaudio-with-built-in-system.html for the latest way of installing a system-wide equalizer. – Mark Apr 05 '13 at 21:37
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I really hate seeing webupd8 and untrusted repositories being suggested as an answer to an Ubuntu issue :\ – earthmeLon Jul 22 '13 at 03:56
Works fine in 13.10. @earthmeLon why? Is there an issue from their side? – Halil Özgür Oct 29 '13 at 13:34
You're trusting them with root, is all. I'm not quite sure they've been vetted to be trusted at that level. To each their own, though. @HalilÖzgür – earthmeLon Oct 29 '13 at 17:15
Webupd8 doesn't look like suspicious according to these criteria: http://askubuntu.com/a/35636/54899 (it's even mentioned there). – Halil Özgür Oct 29 '13 at 20:30
@HalilÖzgür The concern is with PPAs in general; see this explanation. – ændrük Nov 06 '13 at 17:49
Thanks i have some headphones that lack serious high-ends and low-ends. after some tweaking it sounds so much better. – codenamejames Feb 17 '15 at 19:16
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Confirmed that this works on 14.10 Utopic Unicorn. – CodeMouse92 Apr 15 '15 at 00:59
working on 15.04 – DevDonkey Sep 02 '15 at 10:03
what differs from the package in the official repo for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS? apt-get install pulseaudio-equalizer ? – Andrea Borga Nov 14 '15 at 09:58
@AndreaBorga I just tried apt-get install pulseaudio-equalizer in Ubuntu 14.04, and there is no package for it. You must have a PPA. – Nathan Nov 19 '15 at 21:31
I can confirm that this works on Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak, Beta 2) and Debian 8.6.0. Thanks for the answer! – Oct 03 '16 at 17:06
Too bad it involves foreign repositories. Security audits become a nightmare if they need to audit other repositories so we simply can't do that. I need something that is available on the plain-vanilla software releases. – SDsolar Aug 09 '17 at 02:39
Scratch that. On 16.04, it correctly installs, but qpaeq isn't found. Instead, you can just open the app normally from the dash. – Caleb Stanford Dec 14 '17 at 05:22
This doesn't seem to work in Ubuntu 21.04, Ubuntu uses ALSA as default instead of pulse – rubo77 Nov 12 '21 at 05:07

score 20 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 23 '10 at 21:14

20

Psyke83's on the Ubuntu Forums wrote a 'script' to do this for PulseAudio.

Ubuntu 10.10:

Currently the easiest method is to install from a deb created by WebUp8.

Ubuntu 10.04 and below:

There is a PPA containing the equalizer:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:psyke83/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install pulseaudio-equalizer

alt text

edited Oct 23 '10 at 21:14

8128

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answered Jul 28 '10 at 20:14

dieki

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does is work good for 13.10? – 842Mono Nov 27 '13 at 21:48
Nope does not work for 13.10, but webupd8 solution accepted here works – Benoit Jun 05 '14 at 12:19

score 19 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

This list is roughly sorted from simple to professional and of course far from being complete.

Alsaequal

Alsaequal is an equalizer plugin for the (usually preinstalled) command-line audio mixer alsamixer as well as amixer.

Installation

sudo apt install libasound2-plugin-equal

Start

alsamixer -D equal
amixer -D equal

To change to the equalizer in the running program, press F6, choose enter device name... and enter “equal”.

Configuration

You can find configuration tipps on wiki.archlinux.org, e. g. how to save and load custom presets.

PulseAudio Equalizer

Installation

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty and 16.04 Xenial

Follow these instructions on webupd8.org.

Ubuntu 18.04 and later

sudo apt install pulseaudio-equalizer

Start

qpaeq

If you encounter an error and are told to make sure you have the pulseaudio dbus module loaded follow the instructions in this answer.

JackEQ

Installation

sudo apt install jackeq

Requirements

JackEQ needs a configured and running JACK Audio Connection Kit, a howto is provided by this article on libremusicproduction.com.

JAMin

JAMin is the JACK Audio Connection Kit (JACK) Audio Mastering interface (…) designed to perform professional audio mastering of stereo input streams. ^source

Installation

sudo apt install jamin

Requirements

JAMin needs a configured and running JACK, a howto is provided by this article on libremusicproduction.com.

JACK Rack with LADSPA effects

JACK Rack is a sound studio rack where you can store and combine LADSPA effect plugins. A collection of plugins is contained in the ubuntustudio-audio-plugins package. More on ladspa.org.

Installation

sudo apt install jack-rack

Requirements

JACK Rack needs a configured and running JACK, a howto is provided by this article on libremusicproduction.com.

Advanced audio software – normally using the JACK Audio Connection Kit – of course also comes with equalizing features. As I feel like this goes beyond the scope of this question, here's just a short list with links.

Kwave: sudo apt install kwave
MusE: sudo apt install muse
Audacity: sudo apt install audacity
LMMS: sudo apt install lmms
Rosegarden: sudo apt install rosegarden
Ardour: sudo apt install ardour, needs plugins for equalizing features
Qtractor: sudo apt install qtractor
Renoise
ocenaudio

Further information about audio software can be found on the German Ubuntu wiki wiki.ubuntuusers.de.

WMoecke · Answer 4 · 2012-08-13T18:24:06.273

I was looking for a graphical eq package for Ubuntu 12.04 and found this post. Thanks a lot for this!

Unfortunately the link provided for WebUp8's deb is no longer valid, but there's this one that I found hosted on UbuntuUpdates.org and works perfectly.

I found that the easiest way of installing it is via the deb package. Installs right away w/o hassle. And this little thingy works, eh? Even stays permanently after a reboot! System-wide all the way**.

**Actually, I realized why: the eq application is just a frontend for adjusting the DSP's eq settings in PulseAudio; so mainly it's PulseAudio (ALSA?) retaining the settings - the eq interface is just there to allow accessibility to these settings. (I'm a total Ubuntu noob, hope this makes sense)

Too bad it's no longer supported, I wonder why not. But works on Precise alright.

Confirming that this one worked out of the box on Precise, while the accepated answer one 'failed to initialize the PA modules'. — alexei, Dec 27 '13 at 00:03

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 08 '19 at 23:29

3

If you use Ubuntu >= 18.04 you can try Pulse Effects.

answered Nov 08 '19 at 23:29

Scrooge McDuck

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score 2 · Answer 6 · edited Dec 06 '21 at 06:34

EasyEffects (formerly known as PulseEffects) if the future of equalisation in 2021.

From official documentation, install it with sudo apt install pulseeffects

Or, if you want the latest version install the community packages:

echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mikhailnov/pulseeffects/ubuntu bionic main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mikhailnov-ubuntu-pulseeffects-bionic.list
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys FE3AE55CF74041EAA3F0AD10D5B19A73A8ECB754 
echo -e "Package: * \nPin: release o=LP-PPA-mikhailnov-pulseeffects \nPin-Priority: 1" | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/mikhailnov-ubuntu-pulseeffects-ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install pulseeffects

Open it, select the speaker Icon in the top-left.
Click onto Applications, this is where you enable the PulseEffects modification for the sound made by specific applications. Flick the switch on the application you want to modify.
On the left, are your options, for an equalizer Tick Equalizer and open its menu for the controls.

There are many other options which may also be useful, as well as manipulation for input sound as well.

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 17 '12 at 01:03

1

I've recently described it here: Global_equalizer_for_ALSA

answered Feb 17 '12 at 01:03

Delian Krustev

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Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference, thanks! – jrg Feb 17 '12 at 01:07

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 01 '13 at 17:15

1

You can install PulseAudio with system-wide equalizer support. This is basically an update to the old PulseAudio System-Wide Equalizer. There are more details in this blog post.

answered Jul 01 '13 at 17:15

Vivin Paliath

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"this blog post" says what? Remember, this is a database; it is not Google. It does not store the contents of outside links. – SDsolar Aug 09 '17 at 02:40

score 1 · Answer 9 · edited May 02 '20 at 14:36

If you want to enhance the sound quality itself you can take a look at https://web.archive.org/web/20190208002329/https://r3dux.org/2013/12/how-to-enable-high-quality-audio-in-linux/.

For convenience I'll summarise it here.

Edit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf and look for the following three lines. They may not be in the same place and they may be commented out.

; resample-method = speex-float-1
; default-sample-format = s16le
; default-sample-rate = 44100

Uncomment and update them to the following

resample-method = src-sink-medium-quality
default-sample-format = s24le
default-sample-rate = 96000

Finally restart pulseaudio (and possibly your music player(s))

pulseaudio -k
pulseaudio --start

For the resample-method you can also try src-sink-best-quality but that uses around twice the CPU time on my machine, with little noticeable difference to the medium setting.

On my machine (Intel Core i5-3210M 2.5GHz 3MB cache) pulseaudio hits around 50% when using the src-sink-best-quality resampling method and around 20% on src-sink-medium-quality while playing FLAC audio.

Is there any Sound enhancers/equalizer?

9 Answers9

Ubuntu 10.10:

Ubuntu 10.04 and below:

Alsaequal

Installation

Start

Configuration

PulseAudio Equalizer

Installation

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty and 16.04 Xenial

Ubuntu 18.04 and later

Start

JackEQ

Installation

Requirements

JAMin

Installation

Requirements

JACK Rack with LADSPA effects

Installation

Requirements

Linked

Related