Is it me, or is sound really great on FreeBSD?

[loveydovey]

I'd probably turn it off if I saw EQ on But that looks like an interesting option.

My laptop speakers sound ok every OS without EQ, but Waves MaxxAudio on Windows kind-of cleans it up (more treble/less bass; messes with niche stuff a little so I disable it entirely)

The default is not bad...but you can downgrade bass from the default 0.5 to 0.4 for the in-built speakers. I mean I really can't really hear the bass in them all that much anyway, but I do hear distortions sometimes.

 

[loveydovey]

Also, Gemini says: "In the FreeBSD OSS framework, keeping pcm at maximum often amplifies the signal beyond 0 dB into digital clipping territory."

Is that so?

Setting mixer pcm=0.9 seems better on my laptop speakers.

 

[Voltaire]

A few messages back I had posted several sound demos of how OpenBSD sounds.
But you should know that this was using a budget motherboard that uses the most basic realtek audio codec and no particularly good audio capacitors and rather cheap insulation.

Currently I use a more high end gaming motherboard that uses one of the best realtek audio codecs and also with a large number of Japanese audio caps and very good shielding.
I notice that the sound is now significantly better in OpenBSD than what you can hear in the posted sound demos.
This probably applies to FreeBSD as well, as the (analog) sound is partly determined by the motherboard and the realtek codec you use.

 

[christos]

My god, this is the most hidden setting in the history of mankind and universe. The default sound is amazing for the headphones but not for my laptop speakers. Laptop speakers get major distortion at higher volume. I think the equalizer is what should help. I can't believe no one has really discussed this specific pcm EQ option here on the forum for years. This should be central the recent FreeBSD desktop drive.

Also, why is it disabled by default and not set at lower bass value for pcm.0 (most laptop speakers) for safety of speakers?

I committed patches to make these more visible:

src - FreeBSD source tree

cgit.freebsd.org

src - FreeBSD source tree

cgit.freebsd.org

 

[loveydovey]

I committed patches to make these more visible:

src - FreeBSD source tree

cgit.freebsd.org

src - FreeBSD source tree

cgit.freebsd.org

This is so rad, thank you so much.