Easyeffects bug using presets?

[bendipa]

I know this is tempting fate, and this will be a longish post, as I’ve gone into some detail, But maybe someone has had a similar issue with this Pipewire tool. I'm using Linux Manjaro Xfce.

Installing Pipewire, removing Pulseaudio

I originally used Pulseaudio as my sound server and used Pulseeffects as my equalizer, which has always worked well. I then decided to replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire,. First I removed Pulseeffects. During the Pipewire installation I noticed Pulseaudio and related packages were removed, and I was asked if I wanted to install Easyeffects (Ee), which is the Pipewire equivalent of Pulseeffects, so I did that. After a reboot Pipewire is seen to be active and running, So all looked good there.

$ systemctl status --user pipewire
● pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; disabled; preset: >
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2024-09-11 19:36:26 BST; 1h 17min ago
 Invocation: 9cdb0efb223f47edacdaf8f33b736013
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire.socket
   Main PID: 1343 (pipewire)

First testing

When I played audio, an mp3 file in VLC, normal sound could be heard. When I opened Ee, again sound could be heard to play normally, so I added a couple of effects like the Equalizer and Autogain, enabled them, and just like with Pulseeffects the sound was enhanced and amplified.

Cause of Issue

But my problem began, when I tried to import a preset for the Equalizer from my Pulseeffects configuration file. This brought up an error and screwed up my audio. I tried to remove the preset from within Ee but to no avail. I then went to the Ee output file in my .config and manually removed the offending preset. I restarted Ee, but the audio distortion remained, despite the preset now no longer showing. I tried rebooting my PC, removing Ee’s config folder, removing then re-installing Ee, but the issue remained, with intermittent and highly distorted audio when Ee is used.

Back to Pulseeffects

I decided to remove Ee and try reinstalling Pulseeffects, knowing that this was a Pulseaudio tool, but not expecting miracles under Pipewire. Having successfully installed pulseeffects-legacy, everything was back to normal using Pulseeffects, which was a relief. So I now know that Pulseeffects is compatible with Pipewire.

Summary
I’ll carry on with Pulseeffects for the time being, but if anyone knows how to get Ee working properly again, other than having to resort to a Timeshift (which I have), I’d be graterful.

[wwmm]

Try to reset easyeffects easyeffects -r and deleting ~/.config/easyeffects/. This should bring its state back to normal. Through the years some changes to the presets format were inevitable. And in the few cases were backward compatibility was viable it did not go as far back as PulseEffects. Presets from PulseEffects can not be directly used on EasyEffects.

[violetmage]

If you're installing easyeffects via a your systems native package manager (yum, dnf, apt, etc.), you may need to also run the command easyeffects --reset. This is because the GSettings system that easyeffects uses to remember what effects are enabled defaults to using dconf as it's backend. Clearing dconf keys is not always as easy as removing a file, hence the reset feature in easyeffects.