When using different headphones, Linux may need to use an equalizer for the sound.

Introduction

When using PulseAudio, you can use an audio equalizer. A project has been developed for this purpose pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspaon GitHub. The project "pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa" from an unknown author is based on pulseaudio-equalizer from the author
ConConn O Griofa, but much fresher. License GPL-3.0 license. There are various forks project "pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa". The latest equalizer project for PulseAudio is pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa by larmedina75. In this article I chose the original project, but you can build a fork from larmedina75 in the same way.

A fork (from the English “fork”, fork) is a “fork” from a project into an independent project derived from it. As a rule, further development of a new offshoot project is continued by another author.

If you are using the Cinnamon desktop, standard for Linux Mint and the Russian Linux Green operating system, a shortcut to launch the equalizer "pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa" will appear in the "Audio and Video" menu.

Assembly and installation of the PulseAudio equalizer has been tested in Linux Green (Mint 21) and LXLE (Ubuntu 20.04).

Checking the sound server - PulseAudio or PipeWire?

pactl info

Should be:

Server name: pulseaudio

Homepage of the project "pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa"

The project "pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa" is on GitHub:
https://github.com/pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa/equalizer.
The second project is a fresh fork of the project from the author larmedina75 - also on GitHub:
pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa
Which project to choose to build an application is up to everyone to decide for themselves. For the second project there is ready-made DEB file in Ubuntu and Debian format for installing the PulseAudio equalizer in Linux. This article is about the first project.

Installing dependencies

sudo apt update

sudo apt install -y gh git

sudo apt install -y meson ninja-build
sudo apt install -y swh-plugins

Assembly and installation of the equalizer "pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa"

cd ~

gh repo clone pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa/equalizer

git clone https://github.com/pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa/equalizer.git

cd equalizer

mkdir equalizer
cd equalizer
wget https://github.com/pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa/equalizer/archive/refs/heads/master.zip
unzip master.zip
cd equalaizer-master
meson build
cd build
sudo ninja install

Running the equalizer in Linux Mint or Linux Green

Running equalizer in LXLE based on Ubuntu

Running the sound equalizer "pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa" from the Linux command line

pulseaudio-equalizer-gtk

Removing equalizer "pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa"

cd ~/equalizer/build/
sudo ninja uninstall

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