Sound on my laptops terrible compared to windows 11 sound. Any fixes?

[Kojack]

So I have noticed that when listening to music, watching videos etc, the sound quality on my Zorin distro is not near as good as on my windows 11 installs? is there any way to fix this? Best way to describe it is linux is all midrange with no bass and treble, and lower volume than when windows 11 was installed on my system.

 

[Brickwizard]

If you're using Pulse audio there is an ap called PulseEffects in the repository and one called PulseAudio Equalizer which i have used in the past

 

[Kojack]

Whatever comes with Zorin is what I am using.

 

[osprey]

Whatever comes with Zorin is what I am using.

According to the zorin website, the pre-installed packages include pipewire, but not pulseaudio, so one can safely assume the sound/media server is pipewire from details here: https://assets.zorincdn.com/zorin.com/downloads/installed-package-lists/18/Zorin-OS-18-Core.zip

It's probably worth checking, in the first instance, the volume output levels. To do that one can run in a terminal: alsamixer -c 0.

The output should be something like this:

If the terminal isn't wide enough to show all the controls, right pointing arrows may appear on the right boundary of the terminal. To navigate to the right and back to reach all the controls there, one uses the right and left arrow keys. One highlights a title from the bottom of the page (the blue titles in the image above), and then navigation right works from there.

Note that the volume levels on this machine are set to their maximums. This enables the most sound to be able to be accessed. The volume control in sound making apps can then be regulated with whatever the application provides. Apps tend to provide slider controls for volume such as one sees on youtube videos.

Once volumes have been set this way in alsamixer, one presses the ESC key to exit. Then see if it has made any difference to the quality of the sound. If the sound doesn't improve, then at least this factor has been dealt with.

 

[Kojack]

@osprey, The levels are all maxed. Is there some sort of EQ I can download and install to adjust the sound? It's very midrange forward and I would like to push a bit more bass and treble to the mix. thanks in advance.

 

[Brickwizard]

have you tried the VLC player it has a built in GE

 

[f33dm3bits]

So I have noticed that when listening to music, watching videos etc, the sound quality on my Zorin distro is not near as good as on my windows 11 installs? is there any way to fix this?

Are you dual-booting, if so try disabling fastboot first? You can try and install pavucontrol and see if changing any audio settings change the quality and the other thing you can look at is installing easyeffects.

 

[Kojack]

have you tried the VLC player it has a built in GE

I have not. I am using youtube mostly. But all sound on the system is borked compared to my win 11 install. Probably the only thing at this point that is bugging me. However, we everyone's help I will figure it out.

 

[Kojack]

Are you dual-booting, if so try disabling fastboot first? You can try and install pavucontrol and see if changing any audio settings change the quality and the other thing you can look at is installing easyeffects.

Nope. Not dual booting, this is a linux only drive I have installed in my systems. I noticed my little 11 inch dell and my wife's 13 inch dell all have the same audio issues. very tinny and midrange forward.

 

[f33dm3bits]

I noticed my little 11 inch dell and my wife's 13 inch dell all have the same audio issues. very tinny and midrange forward.

I would try playing around with Easyeffects then, you can then add equalizer and search for a raw data file that's for your audio device and import it to see if that makes a difference. The video I shared explains how to do it, these are the two places where you can get the raw files one is mentione in the video and the other I found, there are probably more if you search on the web.

AutoEq/results at master · jaakkopasanen/AutoEq

Automatic headphone equalization from frequency responses - jaakkopasanen/AutoEq

github.com

spinorama/datas/eq at master · pierreaubert/spinorama

A library to display and compare spinorama (speakers measurements) graphs. - pierreaubert/spinorama

github.com

 

[Kojack]

Easy effects worked. Thanks for the recommendation again! MUCH BETTER>

 

[f33dm3bits]

I'm not an audiofile, not sure how how far you are wanting to go but I came across these topics when looking for APO files for my own speakers.

EQ Software for Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS/iPadOS and Android.

Any suggestions are welcome. Post suggestions here. I will gather the details and add them. Thanks. :D This will be organized as results come in. @sweetchaos made a guide for PEQ filter data input and operation. For crossover software go here. Windows: AutoEQ four easy steps to make your...

www.audiosciencereview.com

[GUIDE] How to use Equalizer APO (PEQ) presets in Linux

Here's a guide how to use Equalizer APO PEQ presets in Linux for headphone equalization. Parametric equalization is applied with PipeWire low-level multimedia framework and EasyEffects application that includes a parametric equalizer that can load APO presets. EasyEffects replaces the old...

www.audiosciencereview.com