Dear Maintainer,


I have several systems of users, including my own, where bass is stripped/subdued/remixed/whatever making it really hard to enjoy listening.

I have discovered that if i plug my external speakers into the headphone jack, or if it leave it plugged into the rear or front line-out jacks, but select the port "analog-output-headphones" in pavucontrol "Output Devices" tab under "Built-in Audio Analog Stereo", Port: selection list, the bass mysteriously comes back
(even if the speakers are plugged into the "Line Out (plugged in)", and i select "Headphones (unplugged)" the audio continues to go out Line-Out, but the bass is restored)
("Line Out", "Speakers", "Analog Output" all produce the same "No Bass" results)

The whole world of linux audio, especially layering on pulseaudio is utter voodoo to me, so i'm not sure if this is a configuration issue (it's stock default Jessie) a bug in the pulseaudio system or what.

I have tried playing with changing the daemon.conf 'remix' settings to no avail (issuing 'pulseaudio --kill' and restarting amarok to reset all players)
    enable-remixing = yes
    enable-lfe-remixing = no (tried = yes, as well)
as well as forcing:
    default-sample-channels = 2



thanks,
--stephen

Control: tags -1 moreinfo

I don't understand. Do you mean that if you plug into headphone jack
you do not have this problem? And that the problem only reveals itself
after plugging the speakers into the line-out jack and selecting Line
Out / Speakers / Analog Output port[1]?

[1] This being worse because one of these is selected by default?

​Felipe,​

​I have not tried headphones themselves, but if i plug the external
speakers into the headphone jack on the workstation, the problem
disappears.  Also, if i select the headphone "port" in software
(pavucontrol) while the external speakers are still plugged into the
line-out jack (either front or back jack of my system, a Dell Precision
Workstation, the problem goes away, as well.

If i move the external speakers from the headphone jack back to the
line-out jack, the automatic jack selection code reverts to the "No Bass"
situation.  (but, again, i can manually "fix" it, by selecting the
headphone port in pavucontrol.  I'd *expect* that to route the sound
through the headphone jack, and i should hear *nothing* at that point, but
that's not the case).

thanks,
--stephen​

OK

Yes, that's what I'd expect too.  I have uploaded a backport of
pulseaudio 7 (that has changed the mappings a bit, so this may be
fixed). Unfortunately it has not been accepted yet, but you could
install manually from here:

http://debomatic-amd64.debian.net/distribution#jessie-backports/pulseaudio/7.0-1~bpo8+1

Please report if the problem also occurs there.

​Felipe,

Cool, i will give this a try when i get back into the office, Monday.
Thanks for the prompt responses!

Felipe,

progress :)

sdowdy@resonance$ aptitude search --disable-columns -F '%p %v' ~ilibpulse
~ipulseaudio | column -t
libpulse-mainloop-glib0  7.0-1~bpo8+1
libpulse0                7.0-1~bpo8+1
libpulsedsp              7.0-1~bpo8+1
pulseaudio               7.0-1~bpo8+1
pulseaudio-utils         7.0-1~bpo8+1

I installed these and rebooted, and it appears the bass is working with
this setup, at least for my aging ears. (i don't have a frequency analyzer,
just listening to music through my crummy desktop speakers)

If i switch the port to "headphones" in pavucontrol, it continues to play
out line-out (where i have the jack for the external speakers), but the
volume drops from 68% to 57%. (it was altering the volume a slight amount
before, and maybe there's a save volume on a per-port basis that is being
recalled?)  Anyway, the equalization doesn't appear to be altered, so the
bass stays consistent, which is good.

In 'veromix', if i add the multi-band EQ plugin, it has no effect on sound,
however.   I was only playing with that earlier in an effort to determine
what was wrong with the bass.  probably not something i'll be playing with
personally, but thought i'd add that bit.  (i don't know if it was working
or not in stock pulseaudio).

I have not re-installed stock packages, rebooted, and confirmed that the
bass "disappearance" bug reverts.   I'll check that later.

thanks,
--stephen

Felipe,

Still didn't get around to backing out to stock, but while i was
thinking about it, what is the chance this updated libpulseaudio
package might get into the Jessie 8.3 point update coming up in
January?  (let me know if you want me to backout to stock, to see if
the problem recurs, but i suspect it will.  I have been running my
workstation with the backported libpulseaudio for months now, without
problem, but i'm a limited functionality user (listen to music via
Amarok through crummy speakers on my desktop at work))

thanks,
--stephen

Hi Stephen,

Unfortunately, new upstream versions generally do not make it to
stable updates (which is one reason there are backports). I suggest
you keep using backports, I will continue to update that when new
upstream versions are uploaded.

$ apt-cache policy pulseaudio
pulseaudio:
  Installed: 7.1-2~bpo8+1
  Candidate: 7.1-2~bpo8+1
  Version table:
 *** 7.1-2~bpo8+1 0
        100 http://debian.rap.ucar.edu/ jessie-backports/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     5.0-13 0
        500 http://debian.rap.ucar.edu/ jessie/main amd64 Packages

Ah, didn't notice that the .debs you had me download manually before
got pushed and updated into backports ;)

Btw, i'm also trying to push another memory leak bug with policykit
that causes 'kded' to consume all available physmem in short order.
it appears that they may be pulling in upstream to Jessie on that
(unless i'm reading wrong).  OpenSSL is also looking like it's getting
similar treatment.  I understand the issues behind stable release
platforms, and the idea behind backports, but the world is really
getting complicated faster and faster, and some of these bugs (esp the
Systemd MegaSAS timeout bug - now fixed) in Jessie are really throwing
some wrenches into our environment (admittedly, having "bass"
frequencies on audio (esp with headphone-jack workaround) is far less
important than being able to boot at all, but my users are definitely
complaining).  I fully appreciate all the developers do on a volunteer
basis, so i don't want to sound like i'm demanding or expecting
anything.  I really appreciate your prompt responses!

It would have been nice to figure out what was broken in the main
Jessie release version or pulseaudio (Can't believe we're the only
site having the problem.) We moved to pulseaudio, as we were having
different problems on some systems with whatever we were relying on
before (ALSA?), so, i guess we'll have to work out balancing our
corporate security policy ("security support" SLA type stuff) with apt
configurations that target specific packages from the backports repo.

Thanks, again!
--stephen