ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

greenjeans · 2025-07-02 15:28:11

So I am one of the alsa-only hard-core holdouts, and I know there's a lot of us out there, so here's what popped into my head last night as I was trying to think about tackling a new project since my app-info project is done. I need something a little more complex to push myself forward in this learning experience and also wanted something even more useful to experienced linux users.

I use pure alsa, and in my systems I add a pair of menu entries, one that opens the alsa mixer in terminal, and another that does the same with the equalizer, looks and works fine but:

1. I'm a GUI guy, can't help it, there's no GUI at all for the EQ, and the mixer is shipped now with a tiny sad gui made with FLTK that just doesn't cut it.
2. It fits the bill for a more complex and potentially useful project.

So i'm thinking a simple gui, with a top pane and a bottom pane, mixer controls on top and EQ in the bottom pane, nice looking sliders, some info about your sound card and such similar to what's in the terminal apps and perhaps some other useful info and things. One simple app to deal with sound, and possibly very helpful to newer folks who might want to go the alsa-only route.

Would love to get folks thoughts on such. This thread will be about the build, I already mocked up a basic working crude protoype last night just for a few controls for the mixer and this seems very do-able and possibly groovy to boot.

EDIT: this thread is NOT about how to get rid of Pulse and Pipe, plenty of other threads cover that, so please no long-winded tutorials and dissertations on how to do so or the merits of doing so. This app will assume you have already converted.

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-07-02 15:33:02)

Andre4freedom · 2025-07-02 18:29:00

Hello greenjeans,
Understanding your question perfectly, have you looked for these tools:

- alsamixergui
- alsa-tools-gui

I'm quite interested in your project.
Good luck!
Greetings, andre

fsmithred · 2025-07-02 19:53:34

libasound2-plugin-equal with .asoundrc like the example in the README that comes with that package and alsamixergui can show the equalizer.

There are some other mixers that work with alsa, but I don't know if they can display the equalizer. Try them all and make one that's better.

delgado · 2025-07-02 22:22:24

I remember having QasMixer in my alsa-only-time. It was recommended from someone in this forum and worked good.

It works - shows alsa channels and also pipewire and the inactive hdmi-sound-devices. There are more Qas* sound tools.

JWM-Kit · 2025-07-03 00:46:57

Have you tried Aitor's amixer-gtk? It is a part of gnuinos.

https://git.devuan.org/aitor_czr/amixer … nch/master

I don't know if it's supports EQ, but it is a nicer ALSA mixer.

Last edited by JWM-Kit (2025-07-03 00:47:54)

greenjeans · 2025-07-03 02:03:43

Thanks for the thoughts y'all! So here's a very rough prototype, got the logic worked out for the mixer that's in the top tab and it's working great, and have an empty bottom pane where the EQ will go, but it's gonna take more work on the EQ than it did the mixer. Plus there will be some stuff at the very bottom, info about sound cards and chips and some other things.
Screenie of progress so far:

aitor · 2025-07-03 17:29:10

It looks nice. Which toolkit are you using?

greenjeans · 2025-07-03 17:37:02

^^^ Hi aitor! Using GTK and some CSS in a C script. Been working all morning on the EQ section, have probably modded/re-compiled/tested the script about 60-70 times already and no luck yet, it's a lot harder than it was getting the mixer section to work.

greenjeans · 2025-07-03 21:48:15

Wow, that part was crazy hard, i've been at it for like 7 hours today, just for a tiny bit of stuff it seems like, lol, but part two is done and the whole thing is now 100% functional, sitting here using it right now listening to Boot Liquor playing through Exaile. Last parts should be super easy by comparison. Working draft:

fsmithred · 2025-07-03 22:03:24

Looks nice!

Part 3: Pre-defined and user-defined pre-sets for the equalizer? fsmithred ducks

greenjeans · 2025-07-03 22:25:55

Well crap...no...hadn't thought about doing that, was trying to keep it super simple and lean, a set-it-and-forget-it kinda app that's just replicating the same functions you would get running the mixer/eq in terminal, just all in one place and nice and clean and easy to use. Sound doesn't get changed much on my laptop, but I guess on a desktop with good speakers it might be nice to have some user-defined pre-sets... greenjeans gives fsmithred the stinkeye

Ron · 2025-07-03 22:25:58

It looks good. I'm interested. Any estimated time of arrival?

swanson · 2025-07-04 09:09:43

I'm in! Nice project. I will certainly try it. On my Devuan DAW (Reaper) I run only Alsa and Jack. No pipe and no Pulse.
And I can play both DAW and Youtube at the same time.

For DAW's you can get better latency with a pure Alsa setup.

greenjeans · 2025-07-04 14:31:36

Kinda stuck for the moment, having a hard time thinking of a reason not to just leave it like it is, it does everything now that I intended basically and does it well and fast. Needs some cleaning up for margins and such. I don't like feature creep, just doing things because they can be done. I try to think about philosophy of use and just not sure any extra features are needed.

Really could use some input from y'all on proposed additions, the only one i'm seriously considering at the moment, is implementing fsmithred's suggestion. Adding a text-entry field-button to save/name the current EQ setting as a pre-set, then another little field/button that's also a drop-down menu that shows current pre-set applied (if any) and let's you use the drop-down to select one of your other pre-sets.

fsmithred · 2025-07-04 16:19:15

More important than pre-sets - does it save the settings when you close it, or do you have to adjust it every time you start it?

greenjeans · 2025-07-04 20:09:47

Oh it absolutely saves the settings, it's using the alsa backend to do that as well, the same way running either the mixer or EQ in terminal does, no outboard save files needed for that. But since as per your usual you urged me to do better, lol, here's an updated working draft with user-pre-set functions added, this uses a small outboard text DB file in CSV format for these functions, you set the EQ, type in your new name for the pre-set, hit save pre-set and it saves it to that file, and instantly adds it to the pre-set drop-down list on the right. And you can hit that drop-down and choose a pre-set and it instantly applies it and your sound changes in real-time based on it.

Altoid · 2025-07-04 21:38:23

Hello:

greenjeans wrote:

... don't like feature creep ...
... think about philosophy of use.

+1

greenjeans wrote:

... could use some input ...

I hardly ever use the mixer so I could not say much save for the drop down pre-sets.
That said, I am definitely a client for this UI you have put together.

Looking good.
Thanks for the effort.

Best,

A.

aitor · 2025-07-05 12:09:05

greenjeans wrote:

it's using the alsa backend to do that as well

Keeping the gui updated in real-time according to the current values given by the alsa backend without thereby freezing the interface wasn't that easy for me when I developed the amixer-gtk. Didn't you push the source to any git repository yet?

greenjeans · 2025-07-05 13:13:32

^^^Hi! I'm sure I haven't been clear enough about functions here even though my posts are usually a bit wordy anyway, let me clarify with use-case examples and such.

1. When you start the GUI it polls the backend for current settings of the EQ, which if you've previously used it to set them, will be exactly as you left it. If you then open the terminal version (regardless if you close the GUI or leave it open), the terminal version will also be at those values.

2. If you open the terminal version of the EQ first and adjust it, it will change sound obviously, then if you open the GUI (regardless if you close the term version or not) the GUI will reflect the changes you just made in the term version.

3. If you have both open at the same time, adjusting either one will change the sound, but they will not update each other while both are open. It seems to me that the logic needed to do that would be difficult, involving some kind of constant polling of each other while in operation, additional code would probably have to be written for both programs. But as always, I could be very wrong about, any enlightenment in that area would be appreciated. But really it's an unlikely edge-case scenario, no reason to have both open at the same time in the first place so I don't see a need to add a bunch of extra code and complexity to this simple app.

As for git, I have no git, "GIT" is what I yell at the cats when I want them to leave me alone, lol!

I guess I should probably have a git account somewhere going forward, maybe. But right now I don't use any of that and don't have all the mega-dev packages that go with it installed, just GCC, lbgtk3-dev and libasound2-dev and the packages that go with them to be able to compile, and dpkg-deb makes the .deb package for me after i've made all the components.

From what I understand github is now owned by microsoft, and gitlab apparently has some kind of stink on it too, leaving gitea which would make sense to use since Devuan uses it I guess, but any links to it hit me with that accursed Anubis crap, which takes a literal 10 minutes to run at least for me, and then when done still doesn't always let me in, so whenever I hit a link and I get Anubis I just close that tab and move on. That and the Clownflare challenge are the bane of my online existence.

Again you have to remember Aitor, I have always made it clear that i'm not a dev by training, schooling, or experience...just a VUU (veteran unix user) trying to get better and contribute something back to the community that's done so much for me. Previous to now, it actually seemed almost a little pretentious for me to set up some kind of git account, still does really. These are just small niche apps i'm working on, no more than a dozen of my last one has been downloaded, probably get a few more with this one. Small potatoes my friend, that's all my stuff is. I just got tired of waiting and hoping other people would make the things I want and decided to learn how to do it myself, same reason I started using Linux 16 years ago.

tux_99 · 2025-07-05 13:56:30

@greenjeans since you already seem to have a sourceforge account why not just put the source code tarball on sourceforge?
There is no need for fancy version control for people to download your code and try it out.
And even if somebody wants to contribute patches this can be done the old fashioned way by sending you a patch via email.

Last edited by tux_99 (2025-07-05 14:00:02)

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn · 2025-07-05 14:30:26

sh*thub:

https://only9fans.com/

please note that the above website is NOT:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyFans

the Codeberg wiki was interesting as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codeberg

greenjeans · 2025-07-05 14:44:21

Hi tux_99, that's basically what i'm doing. In the .deb package for the VAI app I previously did, I included the source code for the one C script in it, the other stuff is all bash/dash scripts so those are already readable in a text editor. In some of my build threads here I actually post the source code in the thread.

The scripts are so tiny and only do some small specific things, not sure any patches are needed. And as with everything I do, it's true open-source code that I claim no ownership over, if you check my scripts they all say "Copyleft greenjeans 2025. Use as you see fit." People are free to take it and make whatever they want with it. I actively encourage them to do so. This is part of the philosophy I adopted from the epic and legendary Miyolinux that Vuu-do is originally based on : MIYO, Make it your own.

Mostly any scripts I write are intended to be used in Vuu-do, it's only lately that i've expanded to trying to make actual apps that can be used in other systems.

As i'm sure you know, you don't have to install a .deb to look at it's contents, I understand that when using compiled binaries that people want to look at the source code, that's why I include the raw C code in the .deb. And we're talking tiny here, the source for this script is only 21 kb or so, the source for the binary in the VAI app is only 13.5 kb, so it's no big deal to include them.

This is just my workflow for now, again i'm just getting started with this stuff, progressing bit by bit to more complex things.

swanson · 2025-07-05 14:53:38

I'm really interested in downloading it. Waiting eagerly.....

greenjeans · 2025-07-05 14:59:03

^^^ shouldn't be much longer, I have some more testing to do yet, have only tested in Openbox so far, going to fire up a liveUSB today with a Mate version of Vuu-do that's pure alsa-only and test there. I also need to do some testing with other themes, so far the testing (and those screenshots) have only been tried using my own theme I made for Vuu-do (Ice-Breaker), so I don't know how it might look in other themes. Plus I need to attend to some little things, a name for the app, what icon to use etc.

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-07-05 15:00:14)

fsmithred · 2025-07-05 15:01:10

If/when you decide to use a git repo, there's git.devuan.org. You can have a personal account there that's separate from the devuan packages. I don't think there's any way to build personal packages on our infrastructure.

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2025-07-02 15:28:11

ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#2 2025-07-02 18:29:00

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#3 2025-07-02 19:53:34

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#4 2025-07-02 22:22:24

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#5 2025-07-03 00:46:57

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#6 2025-07-03 02:03:43

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#7 2025-07-03 17:29:10

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#8 2025-07-03 17:37:02

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#9 2025-07-03 21:48:15

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#10 2025-07-03 22:03:24

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#11 2025-07-03 22:25:55

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#12 2025-07-03 22:25:58

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#13 2025-07-04 09:09:43

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#14 2025-07-04 14:31:36

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#15 2025-07-04 16:19:15

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#16 2025-07-04 20:09:47

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#17 2025-07-04 21:38:23

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#18 2025-07-05 12:09:05

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#19 2025-07-05 13:13:32

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#20 2025-07-05 13:56:30

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#21 2025-07-05 14:30:26

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#22 2025-07-05 14:44:21

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#23 2025-07-05 14:53:38

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#24 2025-07-05 14:59:03

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

#25 2025-07-05 15:01:10

Re: ALSA-only purists: Question, new GUI app for the mixer and EQ?

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