This is a PERFECT "first sourcebuild" for those of you who are thinking about trying out a source compiled program. This isn't a tutorial on compiling, though. I'm going to tell you how to get it done and set it up, but not WHY you do it, this way.
WHO WANTS THIS?
Anybody who wants a system wide, always on eq. Anybody who wants a player independent optional eq. Anybody who really likes CLI controlled applications.
WHO WILL NOT LIKE THIS?
People who who dislike working in the terminal. People who dislike spending time to load software. If you live in synaptic, this is probably not for you.
WHAT DO YOU NEED?
Lenny (or newer) and an internet connection. You probably COULD use Etch, but I'm not promising it. You must have alsa installed and also alsa-utils. I haven't included these in the dependency installation. The other stuff should pull it in even if you don't have it.
WHAT EXACTLY IS ALSAEQUAL?
Alsaequal is a plugin utility to control frequency attenuation (it's an equalizer
) of audio input streams via alsa. It uses the LADSPA utilities library for audio processing. It's basically CLI based (although there's an available GUI DE front end). It can be made to sit in between any audio stream and Alsa, allowing you to "equalize" anything from AV multimedia to system bells. You can find out more at http://www.thedigitalmachine.net/alsaequal.html
HOW DO I SET IT ALL UP?
You should not see any error messages at any point in this process. If you do, stop and then post the errors here. I think this will be painless, though. One other note: I compile exclusively as root. There's some controversy over doing this. You'll be fine as long as you follow the directions.
First, fire up your terminal emulator and become root. Then, make sure you're in your home directory like this:
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~$su
Password:blahblahblah
~#pwd
/home/Polaris#the 'pwd' prints the working directory. If you need to, you can 'cd' into your home directory.
Now paste this:
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aptitude install build-essential caps libasound2-dev libasound2-plugins
That will handle your dependencies. (thanks again to craigevil). If nothing is installed, that's ok. It just means you've already got everything onboard.
Paste this:
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wget http://www.thedigitalmachine.net/tools/alsaequal-0.6.tar.bz2
See how easy that was? Now you know how to grab stuff off the web from the commandline
Paste this:
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tar -xjvvf alsaequal-0.6.tar.bz2
That will uncompress the BZip and extract the tarball (you gotta love these terms)
Then do this:
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~# cd alsaequal
~#make clean
~#make
There may be some garbage on the screen but you should NOT see the word "errors"
ok? good. do this:
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~#make install
~#make clean
You did it! Now you have alsaequal. We need to do one last thing to get it working. First, become a normal user
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~#exit
~$pwd
/home/polaris$Code: Select all
~$nano .asoundrc
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ctl.equal {
type equal;
}
pcm.plugequal {
type equal;
# Modify the line below if you don't
# want to use sound card 0.
slave.pcm "plug:dmix";
}
# pcm.equal {
# Or if you want the equalizer to be your
# default soundcard uncomment the following
# line and comment the above line.
pcm.!default {
type plug;
slave.pcm plugequal;
}
Then use [ctrl]-O to save it (you will notice an output path at the bottom of the nano screen when you press [ctrl]-O you need to hit [return] at that point) and then [ctrl]-X to exit nano
NOTE: you may wonder why you don't see the file listed when you type 'ls'. This is because all files that start with '.' are normally invisible. These files hold configuration information for various user customizable utilities like X, gnome, and, in our case, alsa. To see the hidden files in any directory, you must type 'ls -a'
One last thing:
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~#alsa force-reload
That's it! you're good to go. You now have a small system wide eq! bueno. to access the eq settings, you open a tedrminal window and type
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~$alsamixer -D equal
When you want to shut the alsamixer utility, double-tap [esc]
Hope this helps.
WHERE CAN I FIND OUT MORE?
http://sidux.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-11512.html
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ALS ... _Equalizer
