Balance

[chill]

I'd be really pleased to see a balance control in LMS. It makes as much sense to me to have control over the source as it does to have control in the amplifier. Squeezebox players don't always go through a traditional full featured hifi amp. I can imagine using this with a stereo pair of Booms, to adjust the apparent separation, or in my camper van, where speaker geometry is fixed and there are no hardware adjustments.

[Heuer]

+1. Some people have reduced hearing in one ear so a balance control is the only way they can enjoy music. 'Balance' was standard on all hi-fi amps in the 1960/70/80's until audiophile magazines claimed it deteriorated performance. Nothing to lose by adding it, will be of help to some.

[philippe_44]

A Squeezebox is a source component. When did you last see a balance control on a turntable, CD player, FM tuner, etc?

What about the case of squeezelite on a Pi with a hat AMP hat or squeezelite-esp32. Even one of my old duet is connected to a pair of active speakers where I cannot control individual balance.

At the same time, my question came from the fact that inside slimproto, we have gainL and gainR, but it is never used, so why having both then? (hence the modification to add balance was extremely simple)

[Ron F.]

+1

I think a plugin for balance control is a great idea! I would love to see this added, and if it worked, I would use it.


One of the systems I have running is an SBT wired straight into a NAD 2600A amp, manufactured in 1987 but recently recapped. It has L&R level adjustments right on the front panel! This works fabulously, balance control is essential here as one speaker is in a corner of the room and the other midway along a wall. Without independent level controls, the solution would have been a bit more difficult.

Now that I am migrating to RPi-based systems, a balance level adjustment would be highly desirable.

[Ron F.]

What about the case of squeezelite on a Pi with a hat AMP hat or squeezelite-esp32. Even one of my old duet is connected to a pair of active speakers where I cannot control individual balance.

At the same time, my question came from the fact that inside slimproto, we have gainL and gainR, but it is never used, so why having both then? (hence the modification to add balance was extremely simple)

I have updated LMS and squeezelite to the latest available versions via Github. I am now experimenting with the new balance control, found in Settings -> Player Settings -> Audio. I note that the negative number appears to move the center towards the left channel and a positive number moves the center towards the right channel.

Question: how much does a -1 or +1 value represent? 1% or 0.5 dB?

Suggestion: an info box associated with this setting would be helpful, explaining what it is doing and what a negative or positive number represents. There appears to be a range limit on the value that can be entered, and I suggest adding that to the "info" too.

I think this is a fantastic feature, and I should have asked about it years ago. I was diagnosed with Ménière's disease some 20 years ago, and the effect I experience is that my right ear has a vastly reduced dynamic range. I do not have a loss of hearing, but the reduced dynamic range, (>20 dB) means that when the range is exceeded on the right side, my hearing goes into heavy distortion long before the left side begins to distort. When using speakers, the effect doesn't seem so pronounced, but with headphones, the effect occurs more frequently. Being able to set the balance enables me to steer the "center" away from the right ear, this results in a dramatic improvement in my enjoyment of my headphones. Being able to do this via a simple LMS player setting will make this easy and straight-forward.

Thank you Philippe.

Question: does the the SB Touch support the gainL and gainR slimproto commands? If so, could the balance setting be extended to support the SBT in addition to squeezelite? I imagine the same question could be asked about the Transporter too, but I don't have one of those

[ralphy]

Question: does the the SB Touch support the gainL and gainR slimproto commands? If so, could the balance setting be extended to support the SBT in addition to squeezelite? I imagine the same question could be asked about the Transporter too, but I don't have one of those

Yes the touch can support the Balance feature, not sure about the ip3k players like the transporter.

I have been testing it with Squeezeplay and on a touch with the community firmware. Balance support has already been added to my squeezeplay and community firmware sources for the next release.

On the touch, it's a one line change and a reboot to enable it. I haven't tried it on the official logitech firmware yet but it should work.

For those who prefer to continue using the official firmware release I could create a patch installer package to enable it....if there's enough interest.

[bobertuk]

Running latest LMS nightly and SqueezeLite-X on Windows 10 - looked into Settings/Player/Audio and can't find any reference to balance control on my Radio (probably no balance expected?), Boom or SqueezeLite player. Am I missing something?

[ralphy]

Running latest LMS nightly and SqueezeLite-X on Windows 10 - looked into Settings/Player/Audio and can't find any reference to balance control on my Radio (probably no balance expected?), Boom or SqueezeLite player. Am I missing something?

Balance support requires changes to the player as well as LMS

For squeezelite you need v1.9.9-1364 or higher and from my builds that's only available for linux picoreplayer 6 and 7, armhf and aarch64 so far.

The radio/touch/controller should support it in the future, but not right now.

[Apesbrain]

Nice to see this happening. FYI, you can get balance control -- as well as width, loudness, and EQ -- via the Inguz EQ plugin on Windows/Debian server:

https://forums.slimdevices.com/showt...1-Inguz-EQ-DRC

[BosseJ]

Yes the touch can support the Balance feature, not sure about the ip3k players like the transporter.

I have been testing it with Squeezeplay and on a touch with the community firmware. Balance support has already been added to my squeezeplay and community firmware sources for the next release.

On the touch, it's a one line change and a reboot to enable it. I haven't tried it on the official logitech firmware yet but it should work.

For those who prefer to continue using the official firmware release I could create a patch installer package to enable it....if there's enough interest.

Thanks ralphy!
I just inserted the line ralphy suggested in my Touch (stock firmware, with EDO applet): success. I can set Balance for that Touch in LMS/Settings/Player -> <modified Touch player>/audio.

1) ssh into the touch (remember the

ssh -oKexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 root@touch

)
optional) copy the original SlimProto.lua for safe-keeping, e.g. "cp /usr/share/jive/jive/net/SlimProto.lua /tmp/Slimproto.lua.ORIG"
2) edit the SlimProto.lua file:

vi /usr/share/jive/jive/net/SlimProto.lua

3) scroll down to line 370 and press "I" to edit
4)

<tab>obj:capability("Balance",1)

5) press <esc> to exit edit mode
6) press :wq to save and exit
7) check that the file has today's date:

ls /usr/share/jive/jive/net/SlimProto.lua -al

8)

reboot

Be careful that you don't accidentally misspell the line to add, as I did :-) If there's an error in the SlimProto.lua it will not connect to the LMS server.
The first try's when I changed the balance and pressed Apply, the volume control went to zero but after I restored, everything worked exactly as expected. Note that the extreme settings (-25, +25) will completely silence the other channel.

I think it could be valuable option to have a balance setting also for the stock firmware Touch.