Problem initializing pa equalizer sink

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1

Hi!

I installed pulseaudio-equalizer but it’s not starting on boot (ladspa sink not available). There is the necessary part in default.pa though (so “pulseaudio-equalizer enable-config” is not the solution)

When booted up I can “pulseaudio-equalizer enable” and from the output I see that it is first disabled and then re-enabled and then it works. So I tried putting that command in my profile, even with a sleep, but it doesnt work.

I think this is the interesting part:

$ journalctl  --user-unit=pulseaudio
Jul 24 10:51:07 xbase systemd[1075]: Starting Sound Service...
Jul 24 10:51:08 xbase pulseaudio[1297]: Master sink not found.
Jul 24 10:51:08 xbase pulseaudio[1297]: Failed to load module "module-ladspa-sink" (argument: "sink_name=ladspa_output.mbeq_1197.mbeq sink_master=alsa_output.pci-0000_07_04.0.analog-stereo plugin=mbeq_1197 label=mbeq control=-13.4,-11.4,0.0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0"): initialization failed.
Jul 24 10:51:08 xbase pulseaudio[1297]: Sink ladspa_output.mbeq_1197.mbeq does not exist.
Jul 24 10:51:08 xbase pulseaudio[1297]: No sink found by this name or index.
Jul 24 10:51:08 xbase systemd[1075]: Started Sound Service.

it looks like my master sink is just not available yet when the equalizer initializes. Maybe this is caused by hardware? my soundcard (asus xonar dx) has this weird habit of doing a physical “click” sound before playing its first sound, like it’s turning itself on. nonetheless the sink is available prior to that so it’s probably unrelated.

How would I initialize this so that it works?

Thank you

2

The package pulseaudio-equalizer normally uses a built-in PulseAudio module
module-equalizer-sink - Modules – PulseAudio

The LADSPA plugin mbeq_1197 (Multiband EQ) is usually used by another package pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa
(this is usually a more reliable package)

Please post response to this command to show active PulseAudio modules and status of sinks

pacmd dump

By default PulseAudio will suspend audio sinks when no audio is playing, so the click may be the sink being de-suspended

To test if removing the module to suspend audio devices stops the clicking noise use this command

pacmd unload-module module-suspend-on-idle
3

Hello, thank you very much for your answer. You’re right, I checked it, the module I installed is pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa. It’s a little confusing. I restored my default.pa and reinstalled it.

Everything works as intended when I use the HDMI sink as default and master for the eq.

The problem really only is that the main sink (the sound card) is not ready on initialization. Forget the EQ, if I add set-default-sink alsa_output.pci-0000_07_04.0.analog-stereo I get Sink alsa_output.pci-0000_07_04.0.analog-stereo does not exist. in the journal.

My assumption about my Soundcard, forget it too, the card itself clicks before I even log in. It’s my speakers that also click when they wake up from their own standby.

Nonetheless here’s the dump and here’s what the config looks like now.

Do I have to mess around with udev now? please no

4

I commented line 39 which was in by default and now it seems to work, fingers crossed

 35 ### Load audio drivers statically
 36 ### (it's probably better to not load these drivers manually, but instead
 37 ### use module-udev-detect -- see below -- for doing this automatically)
 38 #load-module module-alsa-sink
 39 #load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:0,0
 40 #load-module module-oss device="/dev/dsp" sink_name=output source_name=input
 41 #load-module module-oss-mmap device="/dev/dsp" sink_name=output source_name=input
 42 #load-module module-null-sink
 43 #load-module module-pipe-sink
 44
 45 ### Automatically load driver modules depending on the hardware available
 46 .ifexists module-udev-detect.so
 47 load-module module-udev-detect
 48 .else
 49 ### Use the static hardware detection module (for systems that lack udev support)
 50 load-module module-detect
 51 .endif
 52
5

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