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I have looked around but only found discontinued projects. What audio equalizers are able to be used in 15.10.

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The PulseAudio-Equalizer is the best for Unity and Gnome desktop environment. It has 15-band Graphic Equalizer with many presets available and it's completly integrated with Audio-Indicator on system tray of Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf and also with VLC media player and Popcorn Time.

To install, just follow the steps below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio-equalizer
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  • Just as a clarification about using the PulseAudio-Equalizer from ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8 I spent a while trying to figure out how to open the equalizer after installing it. There's an included GUI, not sure if it's accessible from the terminal, but you can definitely get to it by searching for "PulseAudio Equalizer" (press the super key to open the search, and type "PulseAudio Equalizer").
    – Nathan Hinchey
    Oct 12, 2016 at 18:48
  • Don't worry. The instalation just create a menu item on Launcher automaticaly for you in this location /usr/share/applications/pulseaudio-equalizer.desktop. It works for both Unity and Gnome Shell desktop environments as well. You can drag the icon from Launcher and drop it on Dash to easier access.
    – Fernando Santucci
    Oct 14, 2016 at 11:17
  • Too bad I can't use this. I am not allowed to add respositories because security audits would then be required to audit the foreign respositories, too. Too many computers involved to cause one to take up so much of their time, so that's that.
    – SDsolar
    Aug 9, 2017 at 2:34
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There are 2 PulseAudio EQs I know of: qpaeq and pulseaudio-equalizer (ladspa-sink). The issue I ran into with PulseAudio EQs is that they tend to introduce audio latency and crackling/popping sounds when starting/quitting applications on my hardware (Xonar DX).

The best solution I came up with is to use the JACK audio server that is used for professional audio production on Linux and put that between PulseAudio and ALSA (the hardware connection). This allows for various EQ modules to be applied on a low-latency basis while still keeping the PulseAudio interface for your applications, so you don't have to adjust them in any way.

It is a rather non-invasive approach; you can give it a try using my guide here: https://github.com/M4he/Linux/tree/master/JACK/PA_through_JACK

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    This is 300% what I as looking for. Worked on the 1st try on Elementary OS (ubuntu 16.04). Any catch of using an EQ with more bands?
    – Rui Marques
    Feb 6, 2017 at 16:49
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    @RuiMarques I don't think more bands would give any real benefit on a non-pure JACK setup. At most you are getting increased latency or higher load I'd guess. You can choose between an 8, 12 or even 30 band EQ with calf though, so feel free to play around.
    – M4he
    Feb 6, 2017 at 20:24
  • Interesting, but again I run into the security audit problem. Oh, well.
    – SDsolar
    Aug 9, 2017 at 2:36
  • This sounds exactly the correct way forward for Ubuntu audio. Is there any reason Ubuntu doesn't configure things like this by default?
    – Mikko Rantalainen
    Feb 1, 2021 at 9:17

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