Balena Sound: Can't get Equalizer to work on my Pi3 with HifiBerry AMP2

Project help balenaSound
#1

Hi guys,
I am trying to get equalizer support to one of my BalenaSound Pi’s. I have a HifiBerry AMP2 with 2 3way speakers connected but the default output is lacking low and high tones or midtones are to high. Now I know I can install libasound2-plugin-equal but I seem to be unable to get it work! I can change the equalizer settings but it has no effect. I installed it on the audio container.
Any help would be appreciated!

Btw don’t you guys think it would be nice to have equalizer implemented by default??

Regards,
Peter

#3

Hi Peter,

While I don’t have that card for testing, I did notice on the HiFiBerry site that you need to route the audio to alsaeq first before the AMP2. It’s outlined in this page: https://www.hifiberry.com/docs/software/guide-adding-equalization-using-alsaeq/ - you’ll need to make adjustments to those directions to account for the fact that it’s running in a container. You may need to create an asound.conf file in /etcand experiment with that.

I think it would be nice to have an equalizer by default! There is a GitHub issue labeled as an “enhancement” here: https://github.com/balenalabs/balena-sound/issues/133

#5

Hi @alanb128,

Using ALSA equaliser support is not limited to the hardware you use, it’s just a package with some needed audio routing. The thing is when I take a look at the audio container and all the configuration files for Pulseaudio and Alsa I don’t get what to put where anymore… So some explanation of the audio routing and the configuration files therefore would be amazing! I have offcourse experimented with it already and running alsamixer -D equal nicely shows me the equalizer but the output doesn’t change so I probably am picking the wrong items in the configs to route over the EQ and back into pulse/alsa… If anyone could help me out with that it would be amazing! And yeah I really think it would be amazing to have EQ support just builtin.

The only needed packages are “caps” and “libasound2-plugin-equal”, easily installable by apt and working perfectly on my private linux box. Offcourse it would be most amazing if the equalizer would be configurable by setting some environment variables.

Thnx in advance!

#13

Hi there, since the audio block uses PulseAudio, its suggested that you should instead look into using pulseaudio-equalizer, not alsaeq. Modifying things at the ALSO level isn’t recommended when using the audioblock as balena sound does. It is on our todo list to have EQ support built in to balena sound, but in the meantime, we’d suggest looking into pulseaudio-equalizer instead.

As for the architecture of balena sound, these docs might be of use:

#15

Hi there, I am also stuck with kind of the same problem, but also I am not really good in programming:(
I successfully installed BalenaSound in my Pi3 and Pi4, one is attached to a normal HifiBerry Card, one is connected to the HifiBerry AMP2 and, of cause, the sound is bad due to the missing equalizer.

I am totally lost with where I should find the PulseAudio-Equalizer or where i could change values or Push a plugin.

Can someone help me with this more detailled? I really enjoy messing with this system, in total it’s really working awesome!!

I’m really looking forward to an answer,

Thanks already and still have a nice Christmas time

#16

Hi, thanks for using the forums. Equalizer support is already in the balenaSound roadmap. Let me check with the team and we will get back to you.

1 Like
#18

The only thing that is missing, i hope it will arrive soon :heart:

#22

Hi alexgg, is there any update regarding the timeframe?

#23

You can find the issue for it here: https://github.com/balenalabs/balena-sound/issues/133. We don’t have any concrete timeframe on it, but we are more than happy to accept contributions.