I would like to know if there are any decent equalizer applications for openSuSe out there except KMix, that for some reason doesn’t work for me? Like, it just doesn’t open. I couldn’t help but notice that Windows 7 has a better sound quality that Suse when playing Youtube and stuff, and I know that it’s not a driver or speaker problem because I also have VLC installed on SuSe, wich has a built-in equalizer and I notice a huge difference in sound quality. Normal youtube sounds like my laptop is in a stone box. It’s not the volume, but the quality. Do you have any suggestions? I’m running openSuSe 11.4 64-bit by the way.
I would like to know if there are any decent equalizer applications for openSuSe out there except KMix, that for some reason doesn’t work for me? Like, it just doesn’t open. I couldn’t help but notice that Windows 7 has a better sound quality that Suse when playing Youtube and stuff, and I know that it’s not a driver or speaker problem because I also have VLC installed on SuSe, wich has a built-in equalizer and I notice a huge difference in sound quality. Normal youtube sounds like my laptop is in a stone box. It’s not the volume, but the quality. Do you have any suggestions? I’m running openSuSe 11.4 64-bit by the way.
Can you tell us just what audio hardware that you are using? A lot of people claim to have better luck using the volume control named pavucontrol, which is said to be the Pulse Audio Volume Control. You can open YaST / Software / Software Management and search for pavucontrol is installed. Personally I have started using the xfce4-mixer, part of XFCE, but it works just fine under KDE I have found.
I can tell you that some sound chipsets from Realtek do seem pretty bad in Linux even as they seem to work just fine in Windows. My approach has been to purchase a separate Creative Sound Blaster sound card which work equally well in Windows and Linux. Keep in mind that if the manufacturer does not write a Linux specific driver, then someone with Linux has wrote their own, often sub par to that for Windows, but you must complain to who ever makes the sound chipset for not writing a good driver for Linux. For instance, Creative released an open source driver a couple of years ago for the X-Fi sound cards which is why almost all of them work well in Linux.
I happen to have a bash script file called start that might be helpful in detecting your sound hardware. Here is a link to that program:
Are we actually talking about equalizers here? Because KMix is a mixer (hence the name), big difference.
If you actually are seeking for equalizers, you should look into the respective applications (note that in some cases you must enable software mixing in case the driver does not support the hardware mixer); for video-playback SMplayer offers a ten-band-equalizer, for audio-playback you can find the same for example in Clementine (and amarok, I suppose), which also offers a pregain - actually most audioplayers offer some sort of equalizer, just check the settings a bit.
A soundcard-mixer does influence the sound, but not in terms of equalization or soundquality, but rather in terms of volume, gain, boost, channel-settings etc. I have read in this forum that PulseAudio, when activated, does offer some sane settings, however I have deactivated and uninstalled it (as much as possible w/o breaking critical dependencies) and can use KMix just fine. You might have to take a look into KMix’ settings and add certain channels before configuring them.
Edit: KMix not starting properly seems like a serious problem, though. You should inspect that behaviour a bit more.
I want to know this as well…I have SoundMax nVidia chips and for windows there is a general equalizer…in openSuse I can also use VLC but say when I am watching a movie in Firefox from Amazon Instant I would like to make the voice clearer with a general purpose equalizer.
I installed the PulseAudio Equalizer and it is good for my ears. But there is one annoying thing: if I play a playlist from Spotify, Vlc etc. the equalizer does the job all the time, but when I select a new tune the I must push the settings in the EQ again or change the settings in pavucontrol.
This guy has a similar problem:
“Guys I have a problem with the pulseaudio equalizer. I have checked EQ
Enabled & Keep Settings. But I have to click apply settings everytime
mplayer (cli) changes track.
How do I solve this ?”
I found the solution. In KDE Systemsettings/Phonon/Audioplayback I moved “LADSPA Plugin Multiband EQ on CMI8788 [Oxygen Audio]” to the first position before the next with name “CMI8788 [Oxygen Audio]”. The EQ is keepings the settings now!
The equilizer is a great addition.
I noticed one issue with youtube. When the songs change, the equilizer acts if its not enabled.
Applying settings always mutes the sound, but raising the volume after this applies the equilizer.
But there is one annoying thing: if I play a playlist from Spotify, Vlc etc. the equalizer does the job all the time, but when I select a new tune the I must push the settings in the EQ again or change the settings in pavucontrol.