First Lemmy post for me!

I was going to post on /Linuxquestions but I thought I would try here first.

I have an imac2011 which I ran Ubuntu 23.04, Kubuntu and Ubuntu Cinnamon. I discovered Easy Effects audio app which allowed me to download profiles to enhance the audio from the system.

I recently decided to try OpenCoreLegacyParcher and installed a newer version of macos, which is currently running on my system and the audio quaility is just breath taking compared to Linux.

Is there anyway I can get closer to audio from macos on Linux? I’m considering going back to Linux soon but I think i’ll miss how good the audio is :(

  • Atemu@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Apple very likely applies specially tweaked DSP. They’re very very good at that.
    You’d have to replicate that using something like Easy Effects. Play around with the EQ and see what you can do.

    It could also be a bad driver in which case you probably can’t do anything about that.

    • ceanth@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Hello, I don’t think its a driver issue but its more of tweaking issue.

      Is there anyway I take make an EQ based on the audio output on macos? I don’t think my ears are good enough to remember the sound output on macOS for me to then replicate in Linux when I switch over

      • Atemu@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        That’s an interesting thought and you could potentially even do that using commodity hardware.

        You could create a sound file which first plays a few short beeps for synchronisation and then does a sweep of the full frequency range. You’d then play that file back in macOS and in Linux at the same volume and record it with a mic in a fixed position.
        Then you’d take the two recordings, line them up using the synchronisation beeps and compare the amplitudes of any given frequency. From that difference you could infer the EQ you’d have to add on Linux to get the same frequency response as macOS.

        I don’t know how exactly you’d do the last step but it should at least be possible.

        Mic quality (beyond a very basic point) or colouring should be an issue since you’d have the same mic frequency response in both tests and only care about the difference.

  • Raimu@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    By default audio is often configured to run properly on the crappiest sound card and CPU. Since you used easyeffect I assume you use pipeWire. Here some of my config : In pipewire.conf :

    default.clock.rate          = 96000
     default.clock.allowed-rates = [ 44100 48000 96000 192000 ]
    

    In pipewire-pulse.conf

    stream.properties = {
        resample.quality      = 10
    }
    
    • Atemu@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Unless you happen to be a bat, setting the output sample rate to 96000 will do absolutely nothing to improve audio quality.

      • Raimu@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        As @holland@lemmy.ml said I shouldn’t have set default.clock.rate.

        I have 96000 and 192000 in allowed-rates beacause some of my flac are at this sample rate and it avoid resampling them and losing quality (or using CPU in this case because at resample.quality 10 it should not be hearable)

    • holland@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      If you’re using default.clock.allowed-rates you shouldn’t set default.clock.rate or it won’t switch based on the source frequency.

  • RoBoT_095@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I learned that PopOs runs best on iMac with least amount of problems, I don’t know if that will fix audio but you can always download PopOs on a flash drive and boot to it to try out without installing it on drive.

    • ceanth@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Thats a good idea, I suppose I could use a live Linux boot to play around with the EQ settings