Bugzilla – Bug 1190074
Pulseaudio equalizer inoperative after last update
Last modified: 2023-10-03 16:51:30 UTC
The pulseaudio equalizer is inoperative after the last Pulse updates. This was previously working well. There were no other changes made to the system other than installing the updates. Command line startup messages are below (the equalizer will not enable): pulseaudio-equalizer enable PulseAudio Equalizer/LADSPA Processor 2.7 (05/02/2010) ------------------------------------- Current operation: disabling equalizer ------------------------------------- Unloading & reloading stream-restore module... Unloading module-ladspa-sink... Moving active PulseAudio clients to ALSA sink (alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo)... Transferring current mute (0) & volume (48583%) to ALSA sink (alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo)... ------------------------------------- Current operation: enabling equalizer ------------------------------------- Unloading & reloading stream-restore module... Loading module-ladspa-sink... Transferring current mute (0) & volume (48583%) to LADSPA sink (ladspa_output.mbeq_1197.mbeq)... Setting ALSA sink (alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.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)... ------------------------------------- Equalizer status: [disabled] Equalizer configuration status: [disabled] -------------------------------------
Could you check your zypper log, try to downgrade relevant packages and verify which update caused the problem? The last change of PA was only dropping an environment variable for SDL configuration, hence it must be irrelevant, per se.
I think I am likely mistaken in that the equalizer stopped working with the very last Tumbleweed update. I compared an identical working system to the one with the latest updates that does not work right. Both have identical packages (names) installed and all versions of those except for pulse match. The broken pulse version is 15.0-2.1-x86_64 and the working pulse version is 14.2-8.1-x86_64 and I don't know if there were any interim versions between the two I have here to test. The pulse-equalizer versions are identical at 2.7.0.2-7.8-noarch. I could rev the working system to those intermediate versions if it would help. On the working system, I launch the pulse-equalizer, it opens, I click "enable" and immediately a sink is created, I get an on-screen notification that it has been created which then disappears, and all of the audio is now automatically routed through the equalizer sink. Clicking the "enable" again disables the equalizer as it should and the audio reverts to the line out sink as it should. None of the above works on the latest pulse version.
Here is a working terminal output: pulseaudio-equalizer enable PulseAudio Equalizer/LADSPA Processor 2.7 (05/02/2010) ------------------------------------- Current operation: disabling equalizer ------------------------------------- Unloading & reloading stream-restore module... Unloading module-ladspa-sink... Moving active PulseAudio clients to ALSA sink (alsa_output.pci-0000_00_05.0.analog-stereo)... Transferring current mute (0) & volume (49145%) to ALSA sink (alsa_output.pci-0000_00_05.0.analog-stereo)... ------------------------------------- Current operation: enabling equalizer ------------------------------------- Unloading & reloading stream-restore module... Loading module-ladspa-sink... Transferring current mute (0) & volume (49145%) to LADSPA sink (ladspa_output.mbeq_1197.mbeq)... Setting ALSA sink (alsa_output.pci-0000_00_05.0.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)... ------------------------------------- Equalizer status: [enabled] Equalizer configuration status: [disabled] Equalizer plugin: [mbeq_1197/mbeq] Equalizer control: [5.3,2.6,2.6,-8.5,-10.5,-11.2,-16.0,-14.7,-6.6,-5.7,-3.0,3.0,6.7,7.3,7.3] NOTE: Using user-customized settings from '/home/rick/.config/pulse/equalizerrc'... -------------------------------------
I tested this on 2 other Tumbleweed systems that were at the latest updates on Tumbleweed, and they were both broken too in the exact same way. I then upgraded the working system to the latest Tumbleweed updates and it immediately broke too.
Sounds rather like some inconsistency of pulseaudio-equalizer with the latest PA. Reassigned to pulseaudio-equalizer package maintainer.
I am not sure whether this may be related to this bug that I discovered today: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/issues/1272 I would like to suggest setting the LADSPA_PATH environment variable as a workaround until upstream fixes this. Will attach proposed files for /etc/profile.d/ .
Created attachment 852653 [details] Fix-up for /etc/profile.d (sh)
Created attachment 852654 [details] Fix-up for /etc/profile.d (csh)
I tried the fix (bash so used the .sh file) on my system as user and as root, but it did not fix the issue for me/ Not that I might not be misapplying it, so any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks in advance,
I had that same issue but managed to work around it by adding the following line to /etc/profile.d/pulseaudio.sh: export LADSPA_PATH=/usr/lib64/ladspa What I am not sure about is if that comes from an error on ladspa or on pulseaudio...
Though I don't see any reason why previous patch would have a different result, maybe I'm wrong, so I posted
Raphael Bertoche, I followed your tip of adding the following line to: /etc/profile.d/pulseaudio.sh: export LADSPA_PATH=/usr/lib64/ladspa That worked perfectly for me. I don't know why the earlier proposed patch didn't, but the equalizer is back to working now :) Thanks so much for your advice and help with this.
great, glad I could help! :)
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/merge_requests/636 This will be resolved in the next PulseAudio update.
For your information: The problem also exists on a fully updated OS 15.5. The solution provided by Raphael Bertoche 2021-09-25 also works on OS 15.5: adding the following line to /etc/profile.d/pulseaudio.sh: export LADSPA_PATH=/usr/lib64/ladspa