Alsaequal on debian 7 wheezy with MPD

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Alsaequal is an equalizer for the ALSA soundsystem that can be used from command line. It gives system-wide equalizer capability to your Debian system.

Tested on Debian 7.4 Wheezy 4/4/2014

This guide requires you have MPD installed and working with alsa


Download Alsaequal

Download File: alsaequal-0.6.tar.bz2

Make and Install alsaequal

  • Get Dependencies
aptitude install build-essential caps libasound2-dev libasound2-plugins libasound2-plugin-equal
  • Switch to home directory and download alsaequal
wget http://www.thedigitalmachine.net/tools/alsaequal-0.6.tar.bz2
  • Extract alsaequal, enter directory
tar xf alsaequal-0.6.tar.bz2
cd alsaequal
  • Make soft link to alsa-lib for alsaequal make process
ln -sf /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/alsa-lib /usr/lib/alsa-lib
  • Run the make processes
make clean
make
make install
make clean
  • alsaequal is now installed if you had no errors

Apply alsaequal at boot

  • edit your ~/.asoundrc (make it if it doesnt exist)
nano ~/.asoundrc
  • Add these lines
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;
   }

Link MPD with alsaequal

  • for this you just need to modify your primary alsa device in /etc/mpd.conf to be like so:
audio_output {
 type		"alsa"
 name		"My ALSA EQ"
 device		"plug:plugequal"
 mixer_type      "software"	# optional
 mixer_device	"default"	# optional
 mixer_control	"PCM"		# optional
 mixer_index	"0"		# optional
 use_mmap	"yes"
}

Restart and check alsaequal

  • Alsaequal should now be installed and working, try running it
alsa force-reload
service mpd restart
alsamixer -D equal
  • If you are using root user change user in mpd.conf to root


Troubleshooting

  1. A bad idea so says everyone basically, but in /etc/mpd.conf I had to change user to root for this to work. It is probably because I log in a root more than I should...


External Resources

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