Documentation

Audio & EasyEffects

Laptop speakers are a physics problem — tiny drivers, no enclosure volume — and software claws back a surprising amount. Margine preinstalls EasyEffects, a system-wide effects chain that sits between every application and your output device via PipeWire. Nothing is forced on you: effects are off until you enable them, the bypass button gives you an instant before/after, and presets are per-device.

What EasyEffects is

EasyEffects attaches a DSP chain to your PipeWire audio: parametric EQ, bass enhancer, loudness, compressor, limiter on output; echo cancellation and noise removal on input. Because it operates at the sound-server level, it applies to every app — Flatpaks, games, browsers — with nothing to configure per application.

It's preinstalled on Margine (you'll find it in Activities) and updated with the rest of your Flatpaks.

Rescuing laptop speakers — the Framework 13 preset

Margine is developed on a Framework 13 with the stock (non-PRO) speakers, where a tuned EasyEffects chain is the difference between "thin and honky" and "actually pleasant". A hand-tuned preset for exactly that hardware — EQ to tame the midrange and recover some low end, loudness for quiet listening, a limiter last so nothing clips — is being prepared to ship with the image, importable with one click.

Until it lands, the recipe below gets you most of the way on any laptop: start from a community preset and re-voice the EQ by ear for your speakers.

Turn effects on and off

  • Instant A/B: the bypass toggle in the header bar switches the whole chain off and on. Use it constantly while tuning.
  • Make it persistent: Preferences → Launch service at system start — EasyEffects then runs headless in the background on every login.
  • Per-device autoloading: in the Presets menu, assign a preset to a specific output device. Your speakers get the EQ; your headphones stay clean — it switches automatically when you plug in.

Build or import presets

Duplicate before you tweak: Presets → save under a new name, then adjust EQ bands live while music plays. The original stays untouched.

Community presets: JackHack96's EasyEffects-Presets is the classic collection (Presets → Import). For headphones, look at AutoEq-derived EQ profiles instead — flat-target correction per headphone model.

Microphone effects

The input tab applies the same idea to your mic: echo cancellation plus RNNoise-based noise removal makes a laptop mic in a kitchen sound like a quiet room, and it works in any app that consumes the microphone — calls, OBS, voice notes.

Latency and pro audio

The DSP chain adds a few milliseconds. Irrelevant for playback; relevant for live monitoring. When you're tracking in Reaper with low-latency monitoring, hit bypass (or quit EasyEffects) for the session. PipeWire quantum and realtime-group guidance lives in Pro workflows.

Troubleshooting

  • No sound or garbled sound → hit bypass; if that fixes it, quit and relaunch EasyEffects.
  • Still wrong → systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber.
  • One app ignores the effects → check where its stream is routed in pw-top or GNOME Sound settings.