Mark Kretschmann wrote:To be very honest with you, any audio developer worth their salt (including the whole Amarok team) thinks that software equalizers are nothing more than toys. You _cannot_ make a **** recording sound better simply by fumbling with the data.

There are two ways to really get the best out of your music:

1) Buy good speakers and a good amplifier.

2) Buy good music that is well produced and recorded.

Wow.  That's quite the attitude.  I'm not really sure what purpose it serves, though for those of us with less than perfect hearing it's not especially helpful.  But even that, and the matter of cost for what equipment is considered "good" are both missing the point considering it's something that's ultimately subjective: it's your opinion regardless of some appeal to authority.

If this is the sort of attitude that Amarok developers have, I guess it's time to find another media player.  Which is sad because I've been a (mostly) satisfied user for the past few years.  I think it's important enough that I've gone to the trouble of registering in order to say so.  I hope someone listens and that I'm not simply dismissed as some "ricer" or whatever the disparaging comment was on the blog in question toward those requesting the feature.

For my car audio I used to swear by my equalizer, but after using a crossover with a pair of speakers for the bass and a pair of speakers for the rest I got much better sound using the bass, mid, and high range volumes with the crossover than I ever got using the EQ.

With most laptops, quality of sound is probably not a high priority, quality of sound varies quite a bit.

The quality of sound with cheap speakers varies greaty, but there are some relatively cheap speakers with decent sound. If you can  listen to them first, that helps, if not look for speakers with the widest frequency response, if there is difference in tolerance/variance smaller is better. Same with headphones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_response

http://www.audioallies.com/GetFeatureDe ... y+Response

That's not to say I see the EQ as being useless, but it makes more sense to me for there to be one EQ implemented as part of Phonon instead of different applications creating their own.

Attempting to compensating for poor quality audio files/recordings with an EQ is a lost cause to me. **** in, **** out.

Later, Seeker

I have to use headphones because of where I live, and EQ gives ME the sound I want, not the sound that in principle is "better".  I use Banshee because they have an EQ and it gives me what I want.  When Amarok gets a graphical equalizer, I'll use it because then I'll get what I want with the hardware that I have to have.  What is "better" is not always better.

Mark Kretschmann wrote:To be very honest with you, any audio developer worth their salt (including the whole Amarok team) thinks that software equalizers are nothing more than toys. You _cannot_ make a **** recording sound better simply by fumbling with the data.

There are two ways to really get the best out of your music:

1) Buy good speakers and a good amplifier.

2) Buy good music that is well produced and recorded.


I know that many of you will disagree with me, and for those we _will_ implement the equalizer later on, but in reality it is a bit ridiculous to expect miracles from it.

That statement makes me very annoying. You're assuming to all user's that they just want to get a poorly enhanced sound by using a thing, that the most sound engineers are strongly appreciating to.

I've got rid of amarok because of this really arrogant thinking. All seriously soundapplication _does_ have a Equalizer. I'd rather use audacious, for XMMS had equalizing by the begin.

Yours sincerely,

I am very surprised at some of the attitude here about bringing back an equalizer. It is a useful tool that many users appreciate. Speaking for my own music collection, I have ripped a lot of music over the years with different applications. It is not all the same happy quality and an equalizer helps a great deal.

The lack of an equalizer and smart playlists are my top two reasons for not using Amarok 2. I look forward to the return of these features so I can move from using Amarok 1.4.

Dumb(?) question, why isn't there an equalizer in kmix?

google01103 wrote:Dumb(?) question, why isn't there an equalizer in kmix?

That's a question you should ask there I guess, but KMix is just handling the Input/Output channels of your sound card, nothing more, they do not handle sound directly neither, that is definitely done by phonon.

arch0njw wrote:I am very surprised at some of the attitude here about bringing back an equalizer. It is a useful tool that many users appreciate. Speaking for my own music collection, I have ripped a lot of music over the years with different applications. It is not all the same happy quality and an equalizer helps a great deal.

The lack of an equalizer and smart playlists are my top two reasons for not using Amarok 2. I look forward to the return of these features so I can move from using Amarok 1.4.

You should read carefully again, there are just some basics you don't get:

1. Amarok 2 doesn't handle sound itself, it's Phonon that does it, so unless there is an Equalizer available in Phonon and it's backend(s), there will not be an equalizer in Amarok, as simple as that.

2. The best equalizer can't change a bad recording or bad speakers, that is a fact, you can discuss this endlessly if you want to but it will not change that at all, unless you find a way to modify basic physical laws.

Mamarok wrote:
2. The best equalizer can't change a bad recording or bad speakers, that is a fact, you can discuss this endlessly if you want to but it will not change that at all, unless you find a way to modify basic physical laws.

I'm not sure if anyone would argue that an equalizer would change a bad recording into a good recording. I am sure, however, the every proponent of equalizers would argue that a change, whatever change that may be, good or bad, happens. No one can say that a sound someone desires is bad because it is completely subjective. One can say that a recording was recorded badly, and therefore sounds bad. However, an equalizer is not necessarily supposed to transform an objectively bad sounding recording into an objectively good sounding recording. An equalizer can turn a subjectively good or bad recording into another subjectively good or bad sounding recording.

Basically, its not about good or bad. It's about a desired sound that an equalizer opens the door for many people to receive.

Oh but if you read back the discussions about why people need an equalizer one could really think that those people think it will enhance the sound, which is not true and simply impossible.

All an equalizer does is filtering some frequencies, that's it, and one can fake room echoes with that, but it still doesn't change the quality of a recording.

To close this useless discussion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_filter

and please, all, ask phonon to implement it, we can really do nothing on our side.

Ok, so some people think that an equalizer is magic. I and all my friends know exactly what it does. However, we still use it and like the sound it produces. Again, the quality of the recording has little to do with what an equalizer is supposed to do, which is morph the sound into what a user subjectively wants. I will bug phonon about it, but I'm just wondering why Amarok can't or will not implement an equalizer regardless of whether the devs believe it will objectively improve sound or not. The fact is that people, like myself and my friends, enjoy the sound that comes from an equalizer, not claiming its magical or improving the recording itself, and desire to have it implemented. Banshee has one, and it does not improve the quality of the recording, but it gives the masses their opiate.

I might not be understanding the code behind. Why is it that Amarok needs phonon to implement it first?

AngryKoala wrote:... I will bug phonon about it, but I'm just wondering why Amarok can't or rather will not implement an equalizer regardless of whether the devs believe it will objectively improve sound or not...

Again, you misunderstand: we can not implement an Equalizer unless there is a possibility to do so, and as Amarok 2 doesn't handle sound itself (did you read that? I think it must have been said numerous times already in this forum over the last year!), this depends on phonon. Is that so hard to understand?

Once that possibility exists, we can implement a graphic equalizer, and will probably do so, provided that our devs find time to do so, but this not exactly high on the priority list, there are a lot of other far more important features to work on.

I guess people are confused as to why this is not an issue with other media players. But anyways, https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142339 vote on it for phonon if you want it.

BTW there is ongoing effort to add equalizer and visualisation support to Xine backend of Phonon.

Phonon-Xine already has equalizing support (well, there is a Xine plugin, but I'm not entirely sure how it is supposed to be used by the applications), but not Phonon-GStreamer.

I have no idea if/how it works, though. Feel free to experiment with the plugin thingy and write a patch for Amarok to use it. You should probably fix support in Phonon-GStreamer too, though, before it gets accepted.

(Me personally, I find equalizing in music players to be pretty useless, since the ears adjust while you listen to music...)