As a Laptop user, I'm sure that a lot of people, even the ones using Netbooks would have already gone through this problem. Especially when listening to podcasts, and using it as an example, the sound might have loud moments and quiet moments, one person speaking loud and the other speaking very quiet in the same episode. Thereby, I always wanted the sound to be compressed system-wide, and I just noted the other day, that in Windows, some Realtek drivers already offer this function.
We have already a pulseaudio plugin for equalization system-wide, and although it still has problems like not letting us change its values and listen the change in real time, or cracking the sound while changing pulse volume, I do love it and use it. Now I'm just missing something to keep the sound around 0db (or near the volume level you're using) as a leveler plugin for pulseaudio.
Any suggestion?
Best Answer
I had success with the example shown in this answer.
Install Steve Harris's LADSPA plugins
Run
pacmd
and then this commands:This answer explains how to load the plugin permanently.
The parameters (the
control=1,1.5,401,-30,20,5,12
part above) for this compressor are described in Steve Harris' LADSPA Plugin Docs:Due to a limitation of PulseAudio, it is not possible to adjust them in real time.
To experiment with different parameters, I also loaded the compressor as a real-time adjustable ALSA plugin via Alsaequal by creating the following
~/.asoundrc
:A sample MP3 file can be played through the compressor using mpg321 ,
while
alsamixer -D compressor
can be used to adjust parameters in real-time.