Better handling of output selection (headphone | speakers)

[ranolfi]

Currently, switching the sound output device is very problematic with pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa enabled.

Suppose you're currently listening via speakers and want to switch to headphones:

1. The sound output doesn't actually change the first time you try to.
2. If you stop the audio playback and try a second time, it changes.
3. When you resume audio playback, the EQ disables itself.
4. If you try to re-enable it, the output switches back to speaker
5. You stop playback again, switch to headphones one more time, disable EQ manually, enable it
6. Now it works - if you're lucky.

If you simply try step 5 from the very beginning, is also doesn't work. A round of trial-and errors is apparently required.

[kabili207]

Having made a few contributions to this, I think I can explain some of the behavior you've mentioned.

The EQ is directly linked to a sound output. It sits on top of this output and then makes itself the active output. When you change the active sound output, the EQ is still enabled, it's just not linked to your current output.

When you disable the EQ, it assumes that the EQ itself was the current output, and so it then sets the active output to the output it sat on top of. This is why you have to disable and then enable it when switching inputs.

This behavior isn't easy to remedy due to the fact that the program is actually just a fancy UI that calls a much older bash script. I'm in the process of rewriting it from the ground up to work as a background process instead, but I don't have a whole lot of free time at the moment.

As a side note, you should consider posting your issues over at kernelOfTruth/pulseaudio-equalizer instead. It's the exact same project as this one, but it's more up to date (ie. it has a bunch of bug fixes). I'm not really sure why @kernelOfTruth has two projects for it.