While building it I kept losing the center, sub and rear right speakers after a reboot, sleep or driver reload. The card was receiving the audio, but those channels came out silent. Most restarts lost at least one of them, and switching the PC off at the power supply sometimes "fixed" it.

It turned out to be random on every start.

The cause: the card's sound processor only applies the centre/LFE and surround output settings when they change, and at start-up it sometimes misses them. The Linux driver never re-sends a setting that hasn't changed, so those channels stay silent.

The app now switches those outputs off and on once, a couple of seconds after the card starts. Every restart I tested since has come up with all six channels.

There's also an optional patch for the kernel driver (Linux 6.17+) that does the same inside the driver. It also fixes the bass redirection crossover: the stock driver sets it 10 Hz too high, and it overwrites it with the X-Bass setting whenever the speaker setup changes.

What the app does:

- Creative's SBX effects and all ten of their profiles, with the same values as the Windows app

- 10-band EQ with Creative's presets

- Room view of your speakers with level meters; click a speaker to test it

- What's playing and the path its sound takes through PipeWire and the card

- Pure mode, 5.1 or 2.1, and stereo on the fronts, fronts + rears, or all speakers

- CrystalVoice mic effects, per-game profiles, tray icon

Tested on one ZxR with CachyOS, KDE Plasma and kernel 7.3. Other CA0132 cards (Sound Blaster Z, AE-5, AE-7, Recon3D) are untested. If you have one, I'd like to hear how it goes.

I built it with a lot of help from an AI coding assistant (Claude), and the commits say so.

GitHub: https://github.com/ImZoomBoy/soundblaster-command-linux

Not affiliated with Creative.

Reaching out to the gurus with Ubuntu Studio. I'm predominantly a Debian user. I left Ubuntu because of the annoyance of Snap. I''m trying out Ubuntu Studio for music production. I see this for Snap packages installed after installing Ubuntu Studio:

$ grep PRETTY /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS"

$ snap list
Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes
bare 1.0 5 latest/stable canonical✓ base
core24 20260824 2124 latest/stable canonical✓ base
desktop-security-center 0+git.4adf2b9 206 1/stable/… canonical✓ -
firefox 154.0-1 8763 latest/stable/… mozilla✓ -
firmware-updater 0+git.64c41a0 262 1/stable/… canonical✓ -
freeshow 1.6.7 227 latest/stable/… eeickmeyer -
gnome-46-2404 0+git.b31ceab-sdk0+git.f0723a0 164 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -
gtk-common-themes 0.1-81-g442e511 1535 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -
gtk-theme-orchis 2022-07-20 3 latest/stable/… eeickmeyer -
icon-theme-breeze 1.3 5 latest/stable/… kde✓ -
mesa-2404 25.2.8-snap288 1839 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -
prompting-client 0+git.dd8c750 228 1/stable/… canonical✓ -
snapd 2.77.1 28254 latest/stable canonical✓ snapd
snapd-desktop-integration 0.9 391 latest/stable/… canonical✓ -

Are there any dependencies on the Gnome/Ubuntu 24.04 packages from the Linux audio specific packages here? Outside of Firefox, everything else seems to be related to Snap itself or ESM, for which I would not be using.

I was tired of choosing which app I could hear, so I built Fonyx — a per-app audio mixer for Linux (looking for beta testers!)

A lecture in one window, a friend on a call, music in the background. On Linux, all of it came out at the same volume. Something always had to be muted, and I was always missing something.

So I built my own mixer.

Fonyx works like a mixing desk for every app on your computer. Each app goes into a group, and each group has its own fader. The call stays clear, the music sits quietly underneath, and nothing has to be switched off.

🎚️ Mixing

Every app's audio goes through Fonyx, so you can balance everything from one place, with EQ, a compressor, and a gate on each group.

🔉 Ducking

When someone starts talking on a call, the music lowers itself and comes back up when they stop. No reaching for the volume slider.

Once the core worked, I kept going:

🔀 Routing

Send any group to any device, or to several at once. The call goes to your headphones, the music to your speakers, and you can preview something in your headphones without anyone else hearing it.

🧩 Plugins

Built-in effects you can stack on any group: deep bass, a stereo widener, a mids enhancer, and a soft clipper.

It also has scenes you can switch with one click, rules that automatically put each app in the right group when it starts, and recording for any group.

I wrote it in Rust on top of PipeWire. The hardest bug was Linux killing the audio engine without any error message. The cause was tiny numbers called denormals, which slowed the filters down every time a song went quiet. The fix was one CPU flag; finding it took days.

Fonyx is free and open source, and I'm looking for beta testers!

I've tested the core functionality, and it works as expected on my setup. Now I'd like to get it into the hands of more Linux users to see how it behaves across different hardware, distributions, audio devices, and real-world workflows.

If you try it, I'd really appreciate feedback on:

• Whether audio mixing, routing, and ducking work reliably on your setup.
• Any bugs, crashes, audio glitches, or unexpected behavior you encounter.
• Features you'd like to see or anything that feels confusing to use.

You don't need to contribute code. Just trying it out and reporting your experience would help a lot!

📦 Download: The AppImage is available now; the Snap Store release is coming soon.

GitHub: https://github.com/ArdenDiago/Fonyx

Website: https://fonyx.ardend.dev/

If your audio has ever made you pick between two things you wanted to hear, give Fonyx a try. I'd love to hear how it works on your setup and what I should improve before a stable release.

#Linux #OpenSource #Rust #PipeWire #BetaTesting

A daw that you already know how to move

Everything works on Linux.