[pulseaudio-discuss] Weak bass in stereo mode – possibility of virtual 2.1 sound profiles

[Alexander E. Patrakov]

пт, 5 окт. 2018 г. в 12:36, Karl Ove Hufthammer <karl at huftis.org>:

> Hi!
>
> I use my NVIDIA graphics card as a combined graphics and sound card,
> connected to my 5.1 home theatre system via an HDMI cable (something
> which works surprisingly well). Using the default audio profiles in
> ‘pavucontrol’, I can easily switch between 5.1 sound (e.g. for DVDs) and
> stereo sound, which is great.
>

Hello!

I think you forgot to specify the version of PulseAudio...


>
> The 5.1 profile (‘hdmi-surround-extra1’) also work fine for *some*
> stereo material, mainly music. But for *most* stereo material, the
> upmixing makes everything sound too echoey (this is typically a problem
> for movies with just stereo sound and for vocal-heavy music), so I
> usually just use the stereo profile (‘hdmi-stereo-extra1’) for stereo
> material.
>

There is a setting that prohibits upmixing (i.e. filling the rear channels
with a copy of front). It is called remixing-use-all-sink-channels=false.
But it is a relatively recent addition. It does exist in Ubuntu 18.04.


>
> But I have noticed than when playing music or videos using the stereo
> profile, the sound is missing quite some oomph, i.e. the bass is *much*
> weaker (compared to the same material played using the 5.1 profile).
>
> I guess the reason is that PulseAudio outputs a pure stereo sound, and
> my home theatre system doesn’t redirect enough of the low-frequency
> sound to my subwoofer. And unfortunately, my (not too expensive) home
> theatre system doesn’t have any options for increasing this (for HDMI
> audio).
>

Are you sure that the subwoofer gets anything at all in this mode?

Anyway the suggestion is to try the 5.1 profile
and remixing-use-all-sink-channels=false.

-- 
Alexander E. Patrakov
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