EasyEffects should be part of every Linux distribution to improve laptop speaker sound quality
EasyEffects should be part of every Linux distribution to improve laptop speaker sound quality
EasyEffects 应该成为每个 Linux 发行版的一部分，以提升笔记本电脑的扬声器音质
Virtually all laptop speakers suck. It’s the one area where even really expensive laptops tend to fall on their ass, leaving users with a tinny, harsh, and hollow sound experience. While you can’t exactly overcome physics – laptop speakers are necessarily small and thus just cannot ever sound as good as proper speakers – there’s a lot you can do with proper tuning and software magic. If you’re a desktop Linux user, you actually already possess all the plumbing needed to fix your audio; it’s just not exposed to you in any way. Luckily, an application called EasyEffects allows you to actually make use of desktop Linux’ advanced audio features to massively improve the sound quality of your laptop’s speakers.
几乎所有笔记本电脑的扬声器表现都很糟糕。即使是价格昂贵的笔记本电脑，在这一领域也往往表现不佳，带给用户一种尖锐、刺耳且空洞的听觉体验。虽然你无法完全违背物理定律——笔记本扬声器受限于体积，注定无法达到专业音响的效果——但通过适当的调校和软件魔法，你可以做很多改进。如果你是一名桌面 Linux 用户，其实你已经拥有了修复音频所需的所有底层架构，只是它们没有以直观的方式呈现给你。幸运的是，一款名为 EasyEffects 的应用程序可以让你利用桌面 Linux 先进的音频功能，大幅提升笔记本扬声器的音质。
EasyEffects’ own description on its GitHub page doesn’t really explain what it does or what it’s capable of, so here’s the description from Wikipedia instead. EasyEffects uses PipeWire to process incoming and outgoing audio streams independently and can apply various sound effects in the form of plug-ins made by different developer teams such as Calf Studio Gear, MDA.LV2 and GStreamer. All plugins have their own presets and can be applicable inside the suite rather than having to use a different mixer or executing a script from the command line.
EasyEffects 在其 GitHub 页面上的自我介绍并没有很好地解释它的功能或能力，因此我们引用维基百科的描述：EasyEffects 使用 PipeWire 独立处理输入和输出的音频流，并能应用由不同开发团队（如 Calf Studio Gear、MDA.LV2 和 GStreamer）制作的各种插件形式的音效。所有插件都有自己的预设，并且可以在该套件内直接应用，而无需使用其他混音器或通过命令行执行脚本。
Available output effects are limiter, auto volume, compressor of dynamic range, filter, 30 bands parametric equalizer, bass enhancer, exciter, reverbation, crossfeed, delay, maximizer and spectrum analyzer. Available input effects are WebRTC, limiter, compressor, filter, equalizer, de-esser, reverbation, pitch shift and spectrum analyzer.
可用的输出效果包括限制器、自动音量、动态范围压缩器、滤波器、30 段参数均衡器、低音增强器、激励器、混响、交叉馈送、延迟、最大化器和频谱分析仪。可用的输入效果包括 WebRTC、限制器、压缩器、滤波器、均衡器、去齿音器、混响、音调偏移和频谱分析仪。
None of this matters, and you can forget everything from these two paragraphs. What matters is that using EasyEffects, you can tune the audio coming out of your speakers to make them sound a lot better. The few laptops on the market that do have decent audio – MacBooks, some Dell XPS laptops, and surely a few more – aren’t magically defying physics. While they probably do have objectively higher-quality speakers, the main difference between those laptops and laptops with crappy-sounding speakers is that the former come with built-in tuning from the factory to make them sound much better than they would without any software trickery.
这些都不重要，你可以忘记上面两段的所有内容。真正重要的是，使用 EasyEffects，你可以调校扬声器输出的音频，使其听起来好得多。市面上少数音质尚可的笔记本电脑——如 MacBook、部分 Dell XPS 等——并非违背了物理定律。虽然它们的扬声器硬件质量确实更高，但它们与那些音质糟糕的笔记本电脑之间的主要区别在于，前者在出厂时就内置了调校，使其在没有软件辅助的情况下也能表现得更好。
If you know your way around audio, you can very much use EasyEffects and tune your laptop speakers from scratch to massively improve how they sound. However, that requires time, experience, knowledge, and expertise that most people lack, including myself. Lucky for us, though, there are countless downloadable presets out there for EasyEffects designed specifically to make laptops sound better.
如果你精通音频技术，完全可以使用 EasyEffects 从零开始调校你的笔记本扬声器，从而大幅提升音质。然而，这需要时间、经验、知识和专业技能，而大多数人（包括我自己）并不具备。幸运的是，网上有无数为 EasyEffects 设计的预设文件，专门用于改善笔记本电脑的音质。
In an ideal world, you’d pick a preset created specifically for your laptop make and model, but odds are you won’t find one, so for most laptops you’ll have to settle for a generic preset that tries to do its best. I’ve long settled on the Advanced Auto Gain.json preset from JackHack96, which greatly improves the audio performance on any laptops I’ve tried it on, but of course, there’s countless other presets for you to try to see if there’s anything that suits your particular laptop and ears better.
在理想情况下，你会选择专门为你的笔记本型号定制的预设，但很可能找不到，所以对于大多数笔记本，你只能退而求其次，选择一个通用的预设。我长期使用 JackHack96 制作的“Advanced Auto Gain.json”预设，它在我尝试过的所有笔记本上都能显著提升音频表现。当然，还有无数其他预设供你尝试，看看是否有更适合你的笔记本和听感的选择。
Getting all of this up and running is really easy. EasyEffects is most likely packaged by your Linux distribution, and the latest version is always available as a Flatpak from Flathub. Download the preset(s) you want to try, copy them either to ~/.config/easyeffects (if you use your distribution’s package) or to ~/.var/app/com.github.wwmm.easyeffects/data/easyeffects/output/ (if you use the Flatpak version). They’ll show up right away in the Presets tab in EasyEffects, ready to be turned on and off whenever you want, making it very easy to compare and contrast to find the one you like best. EasyEffects can live in your system tray giving you easy access to your presets without having to open the main window, and it can be set to start automatically at boot. EasyEffects can also be turned on and off on the fly.
配置这一切非常简单。EasyEffects 很可能已经被你的 Linux 发行版打包，或者你总能从 Flathub 获取最新的 Flatpak 版本。下载你想要尝试的预设文件，将它们复制到 ~/.config/easyeffects（如果你使用发行版自带的包）或 ~/.var/app/com.github.wwmm.easyeffects/data/easyeffects/output/（如果你使用 Flatpak 版本）。它们会立即出现在 EasyEffects 的“预设”选项卡中，随时可以开启或关闭，这使得对比和寻找最适合你的预设变得非常容易。EasyEffects 可以驻留在系统托盘中，无需打开主窗口即可轻松访问预设，并且可以设置为开机自启。EasyEffects 还可以随时即时开启或关闭。
There’s obvious downsides to all of this, too, of course. First, since you’re most likely going to be using a generic preset not specifically crafted for your laptop, there’s no guarantee the results will be positive for you. Second, not every preset is ideal for every type of audio. Most of my audio consists of YouTube videos with mostly speech; if you listen mostly to music, different presets may yield better results. Third, audio quality is deeply subjective, and what sounds good to my ears may sound like total garbage to yours. Fourth, EasyEffects does take up a tiny fraction of CPU power (I’m talking 0.1-0.2% according to KDE’s System Monitor), but I have never seen it have any noticeable performance impact on anything.
当然，这一切也有明显的缺点。首先，由于你很可能使用的是并非专门为你笔记本定制的通用预设，因此不能保证效果一定理想。其次，并非每个预设都适合所有类型的音频。我的音频内容大多是 YouTube 视频，以语音为主；如果你主要听音乐，不同的预设可能会有更好的效果。第三，音质是非常主观的，我听起来不错的声音，在你听来可能完全是垃圾。第四，EasyEffects 确实会占用极小一部分 CPU 资源（根据 KDE 系统监视器显示，大约为 0.1-0.2%），但我从未发现它对任何性能产生过明显影响。
Even the generic preset I use makes such a massive difference for me on every laptop I’ve ever tried it on, that I’ve become convinced EasyEffects and a few of the generic presets should be installed by default by any desktop-oriented Linux distribution. On top of that, Linux laptops OEMs like System76, Nova Custom, Star Labs, and so on, should really take the time to create proper presets for their laptops to improve their sound quality out of the box. I feel like if you’re already designing and selling laptops, you probably also have the skills and means to create a decent preset.
即使是我使用的通用预设，在我尝试过的每一台笔记本上都能带来巨大的音质提升，这让我确信，任何面向桌面的 Linux 发行版都应该默认安装 EasyEffects 和一些通用预设。此外，System76、Nova Custom、Star Labs 等 Linux 笔记本厂商真的应该花点时间为他们的产品创建合适的预设，以提升开箱即用的音质。我觉得，既然你们已经在设计和销售笔记本电脑，那么你们应该也有能力和资源去创建一个像样的预设。