1y ago

Is it possible to make audio from both channels come out of the "front left" on pulse audio?

I hope it's fine to ask this here, I'm using endeavor os with KDE and got some little speakers for my pc, they however only seem to play sound from the "front left" channel, is there a way to make pulse audio send all audio on it? Like, mono mode? I couldn't find anything that does that...

Edit: Found a solution! Like i said before in a comment on this post turned out i was running pipewire-pulse, so i could use pipewire solutions! tried easyeffects and it perfectly fitted my needs, thanks for all the responses everyone!

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I haven't checked, but I assume PulseEffects must have a module to convert stereo to mono.
- Pulse effects, is that some sort of addon to pulse audio? Will look into it, thanks!
  
  It's an application that runs in the background and applies all sorts of filters and effects to your sound before it goes to the speakers. It's actually quite cool, it can upgrade a crappy set of speakers/headphones to a mediocre one by applying the right adjustments.
  https://github.com/wwmm/easyeffects

If you use pipewire instead of pulse audio then you can install pipewire-jack and then use any of the jack patchbay applications to rewire the channels. Currently I use qpwgraph but there are several options.

You can also use Helvum, it's a patchbay native to Pipewire
- after some messing around to see how the app works i got it, it's working thank you so much!!
  
  Great! I agree it's a little rough for now, and it seems development is kinda slow, but it works for what it tries to achieve already

Hmm, the easy way would be to simply set the balance to 100% left, but that's just the left channel and not both. Maybe combined with some of the other's suggestions it could work.

First, change to pipewire, old man, pipewire is the new kid in the block and works great with Bluetooth headphones.
Then use streambay to do whatever you want with your audio.
Check this video: https://youtu.be/Zv1P6-kUn0c
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/Zv1P6-kUn0c
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

qjackctl
I use qpwgraph that have the same Idea for pipewire. You can change all your inputs and outputs, I initially used to send the sound of programs to my discord input in order to stream with sound, but I also use to invert L and R when I'm watching on my couch and the wire does not fit to put the right speaker on the right so I just switch.
It is very easy.
Here some video, but I don't think you will need.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDBGsbwMo40
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=TDBGsbwMo40
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

Good god I remember doing this like 10 years ago. I don't remember what I did, only that it was a nightmare. I only hope the situation has improved.
https://blog.desdelinux.net/en/pulseaudio-como-cambiar-a-mono-en-lugar-de-stereo/ this looks like something similar to the solution I came to in the end. Here's some more information https://askubuntu.com/questions/17791/can-i-downmix-stereo-audio-to-mono and this https://askubuntu.com/questions/71863/how-to-change-pulseaudio-sink-with-pacmd-set-default-sink-during-playback/72076#72076
Good luck.
- thanks!

either install an old version of pulseeffects or update to pipewire and set a mono filter

Unfortunately I do not remember how, but I did this a few years back. However, I used jackd instead of pulseaudio on that machine, so that might be one of the requirements.
- Ooh, will keep that in mind thank you!

Just found out my system is actually running pipewire, so that's why everything i tried didn't work right! But when i checked i remember seeing pulse-audio
Or maybe i just read it wrong... well that makes things easier, will look into y'all suggestions about pipe, thanks!
- It's probably the pulseaudio provided by the pipewire backend, it is there for compatibility with apps that still rely on it: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#PulseAudio_clients
  
  Ooh yup, that's exactly the same package that's installed here "pipewire-pulse", makes sense

How much latency can you endure? There are several patch bays for Jack that will let you do this, maybe requiring a mixing plugin or something. Gstreamer also has your back https://stackoverflow.com/a/16480476/9331018
Vlc or ffmpeg can probably do something similar
- I play osu! So latency is something I'd want as small as possible
  Oh, i didn't thought about that, won't any solution have some sort of latency? Oh well, let's see, i always play it with headphones so I'd Like to go with with a disablable method or something of that sort tho
  
  Hmmm have you considered a hardware solution? If you're using wired headphones you can get a few adapters to play the left channel in both ears.
  Edit: wait that's the opposite, you can get adapters to (electrically incorrectly) connect both outputs to one side, or better yet get a tiny mixer that can do it correctly like this: https://a.co/d/9guRG3A you'll need a stereo splitter cable to get left and right outputs into separate channels, and maybe an adapter for the output

35 comments