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Using the Sound Settings window (last tab) I can adjust all applications' audio volume, independently from others. Can I in a similar way adjust their stereo panning?

What exactly I would like to do, is to play music with Banshee or YouTube through the REAR speakers only (I have 5.1 speakers) and my game's sounds through FRONT speakers.

Is that achievable?

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It can very easily be done with PulseAudio Volume Control (pavucontrol Install pavucontrol)

screenshot Make sure the paddlock (lock icon) is unlocked when changing the balance

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Perfect! That's exactly what I was looking for! Great thanks! Now is there any chance it would allow me to tune all 4 channels (front/back too)? Even if switched output mode to 4.0 it still shows me just two "front" sliders.... :-) – Rafał Cieślak Jun 11 '12 at 9:24
@rafalcieslak As per this article it seems possible. (I do not own a surround capable audio card to check). This bug report seems to indicate you need to use an analogue output to get the rear speakers not duplicate the front ones – danjjl Jun 11 '12 at 19:16
Yay, nice finds! Unluckily, this allows just to get all channel sliders for the global mixer, but for particular applications it shows only two. Maybe this is a bug too? – Rafał Cieślak Jun 11 '12 at 19:30
Couldn't tell. Sad it doesn't fix your problem. I can't seem to find that much information on pavucontrol. Good luck getting it working ! :) – danjjl Jun 11 '12 at 19:35
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I think you can via Jack. Unfortunately I can't test it myself at this very moment so I can't give you a full answer.

Via Jack you can route your audio input/output from your applications to your desired output connections and this way you can send your application's sound in order to fit your needs. I have routed inputs and outputs this way, coming from several sources and to different sound cards, that's why I think that you can -in example- route both L&R from your games to the proper output connectors and the L&R from your music player to the right connectors.

Here is a screenshot of Jack's Patchbay (from the net):

enter image description here

Jack Download: http://jackaudio.org/download

The screenshot provided presents qjackctl, a graphical frontend for the JACK server - sudo apt-get install qjackctl.

Good luck!

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Unfortunately JACK is not capable of setting gain for each route. However, I might route apps' audio to some mixer application (or a tiny PureData path), there modify the gain appropriately, and route it's output to the speakers... yet this would cost quite a lot of effort (far too much for an everyday desktop usage), and might require a RT kernel for best results. – Rafał Cieślak Apr 19 '12 at 21:51
I am using an external mixer (hardware, gemini, yamaha, and other brands) for routing the outputs to the proper devices/set of loudspeakers. A decent speaker with 2 zones/aux outputs and master/record/booth output is worth less than US $100.00, and the experience maximizes for every task, even recording is that easy. Someday I needed to do something like you need and finished using an external mixer for that purpose, which is in front of me at this very moment, it seems that people who wants to have decent sound input/output is in the need to look forward to bigger solutions.It's just an idea. – Geppettvs D'Constanzo Apr 19 '12 at 22:07

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