[Feature Request] Better sound control for surround speakers (adjust volume for each speaker separately)

[Butterfly1984]

 * Mint 20.1 Cinnamon 64 bit

**Issue**
Depending on your PC setup and the room you're in, it can sometimes be hard (or impossible)
to get your 5.1 (or 7.1 or higher) speakers set up in the exact right spot to have the perfect
surround experience.
Currently we have 2 options to try to balance this issue a bit
- Balance left/right
- Fade rear/front

On a 5.1 surround system, it's not uncommon to have your speakers mounted on the wall
behind your monitors or set on your desk under your monitors.
This can cause serious unbalanced audio, as your center speaker is often closer to you than
your front left/right speakers, so you end up hearing only the sound from your center speaker.
Even if the speakers are lined up perfectly in all other ways except distance from the person,
you can't really balance it right.
If the speakers are placed a bit more random, your 5.1(or higher) surround experience is going
to be real bad.

**Expected behaviour**
Slider bars for each speaker separately:
- Center
- Front Left
- Front Right
- Rear Left
- Rear Right
- Subwoofer

Fade Front/Rear option might not be needed anymore if we could change volume settings
for each speaker separately

For 7.1 (and higher) obviously include
- Side Left
- Side Right
- ...

Just being able to to adjust each speaker separately, so that no matter how badly you can
placeyour speakers depending on your desk or room, or just your room dynamics, you can
actually finetune it, so that surround systems actually work as intended and are properly
balanced.

[Loufute]

Hi @Butterfly1984 , If this can help you, this is already achievable by installing PulseAudio volume control : sudo apt-get install pavucontrol (Or through Sofware Manager).

Next, run PulseAudio volume control, go to "Output Devices", find your 5.1/7.1/XXX device, un-tick the lock, and you can adjust each speaker volume separately. It also allows you deciding where each application should output sound, change volume of each application separately, etc.

Hope this helps,

Loufute

[Butterfly1984]

If this can help you, this is already achievable by installing PulseAudio volume control : sudo apt-get install pavucontrol (Or through Sofware Manager).

Next, run PulseAudio volume control, go to "Output Devices", find your 5.1/7.1/XXX device, un-tick the lock, and you can adjust each speaker volume separately. It also allows you deciding where each application should output sound, change volume of each application separately, etc.

Hope this helps,

Loufute

Although you're right that some of this can be fixed with pavucontrol, I also experience additional problems when using that application, so it works usually with a bit of fiddling. But a simple reboot can mess these settings up. Or after unplugging a monitor or speaker or headset, things get a bit messed up and need more fiddling to get it right again.

Setting the output sound for each application does work to some degree, but if you have several Firefox windows open & just want to watch one thing on TV, you can get it set up, but a reboot or even just moving windows is enough to break the perfect setup you had going on.

I know I can probably force things to go to certain output sources through pavucontrol, but it's not ideal.

But as you said, pavucontrol does give you the option to adjust speakers separately, I just wish it was implemented in the Mint Sound menu by default instead of having to rely on pulseaudio which as said above, has its issues at times.

[Ideally I also want to see an option to just play the sound on whatever monitor it's displayed, once you move a Firefox window or VLC or whatever to another monitor, have it automatically switch to that HDMI sound output, but with the ability to disable this for certain monitors as nobody really wants to hear stuff through their monitor speakers if they have a 5.1 surround system, but when moving a window to the TV output, it would be marvelous if it would automatically switch sound output to the TV for that specific application (or browser window), that would be absolutely epic to have implemented into Mint Sound settings directly]

[Loufute]

Hi, Sorry that it does not fulfil you needs, I thought that maybe you did not know about pavucontrol, and was happy to share a solution that helped me, but I see that you need more than just adjusting volumes separately (I also have the same problems with Firefox tabs, but for me when I adjust the volumes, rebooting does not affect my settings). I agree with you that pavucontrol as a default installed app, or even "natively" integrated in Mint, would be nice. I wonder (but do not have an answer to that): wouldn't it be more efficient to ask pavucontrol developpers to integrate those features/solve your issues ?

[Butterfly1984]

> Hi, Sorry that it does not fulfil you needs, I thought that maybe you did not know about pavucontrol, and was happy to share a solution that helped me, but I see that you need more than just adjusting volumes separately (I also have the same problems with Firefox tabs, but for me when I adjust the volumes, rebooting does not affect my settings). I agree with you that pavucontrol as a default installed app, or even "natively" integrated in Mint, would be nice. I wonder (but do not have an answer to that): wouldn't it be more efficient to ask pavucontrol developpers to integrate those features/solve your issues ?

Maybe a cooperation between pavucontrol and Mint could result in the perfect solution. Pavucontrol surely can get things done to a certain degree, but I do experience issues between reboots or other situations. Having it fully implemented into Mint itself would be a great step forward. Having great sound settings built into the system itself I think is quite a selling point and will make many Mint users happy as they won't have to thinker with the settings themselves while still having some issues along the way or issues that keep going on once they reboot.