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VU (dB) meters for surround 5.1 (PipeWire, KDE, Debian)

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*I guess this is sort-of a software recommendation question, but if I post it there I think even less people will be familiar with this specific setup (5.1 surround, Debian 12, KDE and PipeWire)* I recently upgraded from PulseAudio to PipeWire which enabled 5.1 on my setup surprisingly. I got a USB SoundBlaster that feeds *Digital Surround 5.1 (IEC958/AC3)* (compressed 6-channel audio through TOSLINK optical) into my sound system. For the purposes of the question, the OS sees this as 6 individual channels, and I'm able to play for example multi-channel FLAC files in VLC, or even Firefox. The built-in KDE sound applet in the System Tray as well as the System Settings > Sound allow me to individually control the volume of each sound channel, however only the applet shows a VU meter and it's in mono/stereo. **Is there a program / plugin that can show the individual volumes of each sound channel, sort of like Audacity has its "Mixer Board" which displays the VU level of each individual track.** I would be OK with any full fledged Gtk/Qt app, a KDE add-on, even a cli terminal app that shows the VU levels. Less preferable but even VLC add-on would at least do the job. I recently started making multitrack mixes of different songs, and my own music I play on guitar into 5.1 mixes, but they are hard to balance just by listening, I want something visual as it plays. (Audacity shows these visually, but cannot output 5.1 audio during the mixing, only after it has been exported to FLAC and played with a different app like VLC). I tried Easy Effects which is an amazing new app made for PipeWire, however they do not support multi-channel and do not plan on doing it as it would require a total rewrite (according to their Git/issues history).
Asked by Nick Bailuc (299 rep)
Sep 15, 2023, 07:49 PM