How to upgrade sound output quality

stekte

I would like to upgrade the sound output quality because it is currently poor.
I noticed that in /etc directory there is neither alsa nor pulse configuration files.
I am not familiar with the configuration in Solus yet that's why i would like to ask for
your recommendations in advance.
Can i put alsa & pulse folders with configuration subfolders in /etc or there is
another way

TraceyC

We need some more detail in order to try to answer your question.

What desktop environment is this? (Budgie, Gnome, etc)
What device are you using to listen to sound? Headphones or speakers?
How is that device connected? Bluetooth, USB, etc?
Do you use that device on another system or OS (which one)? Does it sound OK there?

I recommend against manually changing configurations unless you're sure of what you're adding. It might wind up causing more issues. Once we know more details about your system we can probably recommend something that will improve sound quality.

stekte

TraceyC thank you for your reply
I am using i3-gaps window manager and occasionally budgie .
Headphones at night. At day time speakers using a maratz amplifier connected to headphones/microphone combo of my laptop. Sound output quality is better in Devuan linux which i dual boot with solus linux.

Axios

stekte If you do from terminal (lscpu | grep 'Byte Order')
what does it say

Axios

stekte I have no idea how that happen only hit save once but said there was error
so I saved again.
Sorry for the duplicate

stekte

Axios stelios@acersol ~ $ lscpu | grep 'Byte Order' Byte Order: Little Endian
but how this is related to sound quality?

Axios

stekte These two settings will effect sound quality if you change make backup copy of file
daemon.conf before edit. Just change these two settings only
Below is what I use but you can try whats best for your system.
(Reboot required)

Improved my Laptop alot as solus was set to (S16LE - Signed 16 integer bit PCM, little endian)
and was set to (soxr-mq) which is ok these (soxr) can be Cpu intensive but are the best to use.

--For little Endian (usr/share/pulseaudio/daemon.conf)--

Line to change ----> default-sample-format = FLOAT32LE (remove the ; from this line)

S16LE - Signed 16 integer bit PCM, little endian
FLOAT32LE - 32 bit IEEE floating point PCM, little endian.
S32LE - Signed 32 bit integer PCM, little endian.
S24LE - Signed 24 bit integer PCM packed, little endian.
S24_32LE - Signed 24 bit integer PCM in LSB of 32 bit words, little endian.

Line to change------> resample-method = soxr-hq
(pulseaudio --dump-resample-methods) will list supported formats

trivial,speex-float-0,speex-float-1,speex-float-2,speex-float-3,speex-float-4,speex-float-5
speex-float-6,speex-float-7,speex-float-8,speex-float-9,speex-float-10,speex-fixed-0
speex-fixed-1,speex-fixed-2,speex-fixed-3,speex-fixed-4,speex-fixed-5,speex-fixed-6
speex-fixed-7,speex-fixed-8,speex-fixed-9,speex-fixed-10,ffmpeg,auto,copy,peaks
soxr-mq,soxr-hq,soxr-vhq

Edit Oh was asking because it makes difference on the above settings.
And before change had to boost audio and run Eq in Vlc now everything is good without those

SethStorm666

Have you tried Pulse effect app to enhance the sound of your system?

ReillyBrogan

SethStorm666 Pulseeffects, as the name implies, only worked when using Pulseaudio as the audio server. We've migrated to PipeWire as the audio server, so what you actually want is EasyEffects. This is basically the same application as PulseEffects but renamed and updated to work with PipeWire instead.

Anyway, in terms of enhancing the audio quality when using PipeWire I do have a few tips:

First of all, don't edit the default pipewire configs that are in /usr/share/pipewire. Those files are managed by the package manager and any edits you make to them will be overridden when the pipewire package is updated.
Instead, when making changes to a config file copy them to ~/.config/pipewire/*.conf (run a mkdir -p ~/.config/pipewire if that directory doesn't already exist).
First of all, change the resample quality. This is used when the sample rate of a given audio stream isn't a supported sample rate that a given sound card or output can handle. Pipewire will convert (resample) the audio stream. The default setting is 4, which sounds fine for most people but I'd recommend switching to 10 as that won't increase CPU use by very much and sounds a bit better. The files that this setting are in that need to be changed are client.conf and pipewire-pulse.conf, copy those to your local config directory and then uncomment out the setting and change the value to 10.
If that doesn't help then you may need to adjust the default sample rate and allowed sample rates if they're not being autodetected. There's a bit of info here, though I'd note that it's VERY hardware dependent and some audio outputs function differently.
As previously stated you can use EasyEffects to adjust your EQ if you for example prefer a more bassy output.

stekte

Axios Thank you for your mini how-to. I didn't search in /usr/share for alsa & pulse configuration files.
I edited daemon.conf file considering your recommendation and what i have found in this site : https://100nandoo.github.io/techie/OS/Linux/enable_high_quality_audio_linux/
The sound output now is great so my "problem" is solved. Than you.

Axios

I like Audacious it has the different outputs (Jack pipewire pulseaudio) so one can test and compare