GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 614630
Equalizer Noise with Builtin libgstequalizer
Last modified: 2010-04-18 09:17:34 UTC
The libgstequalizer in the banshee source tree has some serious problems. Using that equalizer code gives some very bad noise when the equalizer is enabled and settings are moved away from zero. It is easiest to hear what I am talking about if you use headphones. Enable the equalizer and move the three lowest EQ bands up from zero to maybe 5. You should notice some very obvious low frequency "groaning" noises. It sounds like higher frequencies are being aliased down into the lower bands by the soft EQ. The thing is, you may not be able to reproduce this if you build git sources and use "make run". make run does not setup the path for the banshee-shipped libgstequalizer like src/Clients/Booter/banshee-1 does. I have filed this bug on Gentoo bugzilla (http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=310233). Banshee seems to work fine when configured with --disable-builtin-equalizer. The Gentoo team and I are wondering if we might run into problems if we link with the system-installed libgstequalizer from an up-to-date gst-plugins-good. This is how I am running Banshee now without problems.
Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but please feel free to report any further bugs you find. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 609463 ***
This bug is NOT fixed in 1.6.0. It is NOT a duplicate of bug 609463, because the noise does not go away after changing songs. It is NOT a duplicate of bug 612669, because it does not depend on the "Pop" equalizer preset. The noise is apparent whenever the equalizer is enabled and the equalizer settings are moved away from zero. The noise remains after changing songs. This bug has nothing to do with preset migration.
You might reproduce the problem more obviously this way: start with a flat and enabled equalizer. Move the lowest three bands from 0 to -5. Play a track with a good amount of treble, like high cymbals or violins or something. Parts of the treble are aliased into the low-frequency bands, resulting in groaning sounds. By moving the bands to -5, it should be pretty clear that you are not just over-amplifying real bass freqs from the song. I am playing wav files. That might just make a difference. Make sure you are not linking with the system libgstequalizer.
Derek, I changed the title of bug 609463 to make it more clear that these two bugs are in fact about the same issue - sound distortion caused by Banshee's equaliser. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 609463 ***