Balance, Loudness, Equalizer

tinue

I think most people use their Runeaudio connected to an amplifier. So they usually have balance etc. available.

My Runeaudio-powered Raspberry Pi however uses a Hifiberry Amp, connected directly to speakers. Unfortunately, I can't place the speakers perfectly for my sitting position, so I would need to shift the volume a bit to the left speaker.

I have read that there are plans to eventually include an equalizer.

Are there also plans for a simple balance regulator?

Thanks! Martin

P.S. I use a Bowers & Wilkins Z2 in my home office, and over this weekend made the first serious tests with RuneAudio / Raspberry / Hifiberry Digi. The Z2 is supposed to be good, and did cost a fair amount of money. But RuneAudio just blows it away. Not only does it offer almost the same set of features (including AirPlay, excluding direct playback from a USB attached iPhone), but it sounds a lot better, and it is less expensive. Thanks for the great work!

ACX

tinue wroteMy Runeaudio-powered Raspberry Pi however uses a Hifiberry Amp, connected directly to speakers. Unfortunately, I can't place the speakers perfectly for my sitting position, so I would need to shift the volume a bit to the left speaker.

Have you tried to check if such control is already available in alsamixer?

tinue

There is something available, but it seems broken, for many reasons:

Left and Right channel appear to be swapped. When set as in the attached picture, the left speaker is louder. Based on looking at the picture, I would think the right channel is louder.
As soon as the two channels have a different volume, the right speaker begins to hiss quite nastily.
I also don't understand the "Master": The volume on the Runeaudio GUI is set to "5", so why is the "Master" at 98?

Maybe it has something to do with the Hifiberry Amp+ not being properly recognized: Hardware volume control doesn't work, I have to use software volume control.

Update: It looks like alsamixer is correct: The channels are really swapped. So either the PCB of the Hifiberry Amp+ is printed incorrectly, or something strange is going on in software. I concluded this by playing back "Norwegian Wood" on both my iPhone via Headphones, and on the Runeaudio setup. What's "right" on the iPhone is "left" on the Raspberry/Amp.

Update 2: The hiss is my fault: Apparently I accidentally put the "Master" channel into the red when I started to play with alsamixer. It's now down to 80, and the "Channels" are properly balanced. Alsamixer even keeps the settings through a reboot.
So I guess my problem is solved, thanks for the hint!

A GUI for controlling the balance would still be great some day, of course.

: Bildschirmfoto 2015-03-23 um 18.47.46.png (12.04 KiB) Viewed 5832 times

BorGreiner

That is something I'd like to see too, my amplifier just doesn't have remote and at least balance would be nice to have and maybe not hard to implement.

whoozwah

BorGreiner wroteThat is something I'd like to see too, my amplifier just doesn't have remote and at least balance would be nice to have and maybe not hard to implement.

very true. I would love a balance adjustment. Maybe a horizontal slider bar and a button on each side to move it incrementally for fine tuning. with no way to do it from listening position now this would be awesome.

Mat

Hi, I use RPI with a HifiBerry digi+ card. So I use optical output to my active speakers (bit perfect).
I thought that there is no option for alsamixer when using digi+ (not DAC) card.

Since I miss bass when playing at low volumes I would like to have some kind of "loudness" button. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_compensation

Is there any (at least theoretical) option to affect sound before signal goes to HiFiBerry? Is there already some kind of option on runeaudio for low volume listening?