Improving Headphone Sound Quality on Ubuntu

If you tend to only use your headphones to play music on your computer running Ubuntu I recommend following the steps below and you may notice a surprising improvement in the quality of the sound.

1. Open a terminal window, you can press the keyboard combination CONTROL+ALT+T to open a new terminal quickly.
   
   
2. Copy and paste the following command to your terminal window and press ENTER:
   
   

   sudo gedit /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output-speaker.conf
   

3. When prompted, enter your password and then press ENTER.
   
   
4. The text file ‘analog-output-speaker.conf’ will open in a new text editor window, and in this text file you will need to find the following block of text:
   
   

   [Element Headphone]
   switch = off
   volume = off

   Edit this block of text so that it reads as:
   
   

   [Element Headphone]
   switch = off
   volume = merge
   override-map.1 = all
   override-map.2 = all-left,all-right

5. Now within this same file, locate the following block of text:
   
   

   [Element Speaker]
   required-any = any
   switch = mute
   volume = merge
   override-map.1 = all
   override-map.2 = all-left,all-right

   Edit this block of text so that it reads as:
   
   

   [Element Speaker]
   required-any = any
   switch = mute
   volume = off

6. Save your changes to this file using either CONTROL+S or use the save button at the top of the file editor.
   
   
7. Now return to the terminal window, and type sudo reboot and press Enter to reboot your computer.
   
   
8. After your computer has finished rebooting, check that your headphone sound is working and whether or not it has improved, and you should either hear a noticeable improvement in the headphones.  The computer’s on-board speakers may sound quieter or have a flatter sound, and this is normal as they are no longer the primary audio output channel.  If you find that these changes either do not seem to work or make a difference, or if you encounter problems playing audio, you will need to go back and revert the changes made to the ‘analog-output-speaker.conf’ above, setting the blocks of text back to their original settings and rebooting.

I hope that you have found this article useful, and please feel free to leave any comments or feedback below.  

Enjoy your new and improved sound!