MX audiophile tips and tricks

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Moltke
Posts: 229
Joined: Tue Dec 19, 2017 6:07 pm

MX audiophile tips and tricks

#1 Post by Moltke »

Hi everyone! hope you're all having a nice life! :happy:

I love listening to music and am always looking for some ways - on the software side - to bring some improvement into my audiophile experience. I know that the best solution is on the hardware side; better hardware better results, that's as clear as it reads, and I've covered as best as I've could. But I also know that some tweaking here and there might report some gain when it comes to play your audio files at their best, so to speak. I found this post https://medium.com/@gamunu/enable-high- ... 16f3fe7e1f some time ago and applied some of the suggestions and I believe I did get some improvement. This one is also a good sorce for getting ideas and suggestions https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=253225 However, I was wondering whether you people know/use some tips and tricks for enriching your audiophile experience within MX you'd like to share. Thanks in advance for your answers. :happy:
Without each other's help there ain't no hope for us :happy:

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colin_b
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Re: MX audiophile tips and tricks

#2 Post by colin_b »

I use Audacious to play music and a couple of its effects (output > effects) have worked for me.

Crystalizer set to 0.3 adds a bit of fairy dust to the top end without making things sound too sharp.

Extra Stereo set to 1.5 doesn't really add to the stereo effect, but I have found it does add more punch to the bass.

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sunrat
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Re: MX audiophile tips and tricks

#3 Post by sunrat »

We veered onto a discussion about this last year in a thread about yet another audio player.
viewtopic.php?p=451818#p451818
There's a lot of good info on using Linux for audiophile listening in the links I posted there.
Essentially you want the audio path to be as short as possible with no resampling or plugins inserted as these can introduce artifacts. Pulseaudio resamples by default so it's best to route straight to ALSA for purity.
Ultimately it's all in vain if you have a sub-par audio system so that's really the first thing to consider. You'll never get true hi-fi quality out of your average "computer speakers".

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Moltke
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Re: MX audiophile tips and tricks

#4 Post by Moltke »

sunrat wrote: Mon Feb 18, 2019 6:28 pm We veered onto a discussion about this last year in a thread about yet another audio player.
viewtopic.php?p=451818#p451818
There's a lot of good info on using Linux for audiophile listening in the links I posted there.
Essentially you want the audio path to be as short as possible with no resampling or plugins inserted as these can introduce artifacts. Pulseaudio resamples by default so it's best to route straight to ALSA for purity.
Ultimately it's all in vain if you have a sub-par audio system so that's really the first thing to consider. You'll never get true hi-fi quality out of your average "computer speakers".
Thanks for the link and sorry for the late reply. In the Mint thread I shared in my first post https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=253225 one user Hoser Rob in the third post page 1 said
BTW it's a complete myth that pulseaudio always resamples. It only does so if there's software mixing needed ... there's no way around that which is why I avoid software mixing. But it's easy to prove this by showing the current ALSA sample rate while playing a file (all audio ends up at ALSA anyway).
which I came to believe that it is true. I installed audacious and followed instructions from that same thread so audacious uses ALSA, then I ran in the terminal

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pasuspender audacious mp3_file
Result? No audio, audacious doesn't even play the file. Reading here https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Softwa ... tion/User/ and here http://www.volkerschatz.com/noise/alsa.html it's clear that both depend on each other and if you think about it makes perfect sense; pulseadio is a sound server while alsa as explained here https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6735
consists of a set of kernel drivers, an application programming interface (API) library and utility programs for supporting sound under Linux.
and if you read here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio
In a typical installation scenario under Linux, the user configures ALSA to use a virtual device provided by PulseAudio.
it seems to me that there's no way to use alsa without pulseaudio. The way I see it, one can do his best to get the closest thing to a "perfect audio playback set up" but without external help i.e an external amplifier/mixer, you'll always get half - even maybe less - the potential since software limitations are insurmountable at least for the average user. I'll keep digging and reading till I found "my perfect set up" and even if I don't so far it's been an incredible learning experience, I didn't know anything about alsa, I knew a little bit about pulseaudio but there's way more to it. ;)
Without each other's help there ain't no hope for us :happy:

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Kruppt
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Re: MX audiophile tips and tricks

#5 Post by Kruppt »

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pasuspender audacious mp3_file
Should be:

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pasuspender -- audacious mp3_file
Or:

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pasuspender --server=ALSA -- audacious mp3_file

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Moltke
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Re: MX audiophile tips and tricks

#6 Post by Moltke »

Kruppt wrote: Tue Feb 19, 2019 1:26 pm

Code: Select all

pasuspender audacious mp3_file
Should be:

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pasuspender -- audacious mp3_file
Or:

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pasuspender --server=ALSA -- audacious mp3_file

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pasuspender --audacious mp3_file
was my first try and I got an error message:

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unknown argument --audacious
so I tried the one I posted and it worked but audacious didn't play the file.

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pasuspender --server=ALSA -- audacious mp3_file
did work with one error message though:

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connection error: connection denied
Don't know what that means. Also, hear no difference in sound when running

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audacious mp3_file
and the latter, no error connection message though. Thanks for the info. :happy:
Without each other's help there ain't no hope for us :happy:

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sunrat
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Re: MX audiophile tips and tricks

#7 Post by sunrat »

The difference between running through Pulse and directly through ALSA can be fairly minimal. I think I can detect a slight difference on my system with M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card and ADAM A5X studio monitors when playing a high quality lossless file but not with any mp3 files. The other system with similar studio monitor speakers using stock Intel audio and Pulse sounds fine anyway. I use DeadBeef player for testing as it's easy to switch between Pulse and ALSA.
At best you might get 5% improvement with tweaking software (unless you have really bad configuration) and 95% improvement with better hardware, mainly speakers. *no scientific basis to figures :)

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whell
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Re: MX audiophile tips and tricks

#8 Post by whell »

I’ve got MX Linux 18 running music player daemon (mpd). I’ve configured it to bypass Pulseaudio, and I’ve found the difference bypassing versus not bypassing is significant. For better or worse, the better your audio hardware and source music files, the more you’re able to hear Pulseaudio's negative impact.

That said, I’ve been avoiding Pulse for a number of years now. If might have improved since I first waded into PC based playback several years ago.

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whell
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Re: MX audiophile tips and tricks

#9 Post by whell »

I’m not sure that the comments about Pulseaudio not resampling are correct. Again, it’s been a while but...

I own an external DAC that displays the output bit rate. When using Pulse, my 96khz files played back at 48 kHz. I wonder if the individual who claimed it was a “complete myth” experimented with hi res audio files at all?

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Moltke
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Re: MX audiophile tips and tricks

#10 Post by Moltke »

sunrat wrote: Tue Feb 19, 2019 7:17 pm The difference between running through Pulse and directly through ALSA can be fairly minimal. I think I can detect a slight difference on my system with M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card and ADAM A5X studio monitors when playing a high quality lossless file but not with any mp3 files. The other system with similar studio monitor speakers using stock Intel audio and Pulse sounds fine anyway. I use DeadBeef player for testing as it's easy to switch between Pulse and ALSA.
At best you might get 5% improvement with tweaking software (unless you have really bad configuration) and 95% improvement with better hardware, mainly speakers. *no scientific basis to figures :)
Agree. I said in my first post that I'm aware that the best solution to get the best audiophile experience is through hardware, however, I read some posts of people claiming that it is possible to find a "near perfect set up" for the available hardware, so I thought of trying and started to play a bit changing configuration files seeking to improve the sound as best as possible, which might be not much but still some improvement is better than none.
whell wrote: Tue Feb 19, 2019 8:58 pm I’ve got MX Linux 18 running music player daemon (mpd). I’ve configured it to bypass Pulseaudio, and I’ve found the difference bypassing versus not bypassing is significant. For better or worse, the better your audio hardware and source music files, the more you’re able to hear Pulseaudio's negative impact.

That said, I’ve been avoiding Pulse for a number of years now. If might have improved since I first waded into PC based playback several years ago.
I have a large collection of flac files as well as mp3s, I tested changes with both formats and yes, I do notice some difference when playing a flac file not so much with the mp3s.
whell wrote: Tue Feb 19, 2019 9:13 pm I’m not sure that the comments about Pulseaudio not resampling are correct. Again, it’s been a while but...

I own an external DAC that displays the output bit rate. When using Pulse, my 96khz files played back at 48 kHz. I wonder if the individual who claimed it was a “complete myth” experimented with hi res audio files at all?
Well, he did say that
Set the output module in your app to Pulse. Play a 44.1K sample audio file and execute this in the terminal:

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cat /proc/asound/card?/stream0 | grep Momentary
Then repeat with a 48K file. I've done this test many times and it's never resampled.
I haven't tried that myself yet.
Without each other's help there ain't no hope for us :happy:

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