Pulseaudio: how to switch to mono instead of stereo

Trying to listen to music on my PC I noticed something interesting. When the guy from the guitar I did those solos that I enjoy so much, I hardly listened to it. Clear! The audio output it was Stereo (2 channels) and I have only 1 speaker (my guitar amp). It's time to change stereo to mono the output of Pulseaudio!

Another contribution from Luis López makes him one of the winners of our weekly competition: «Share what you know about Linux«. Congratulations Luis!

Workaround (until Pulseaudio restarts)

1.- Check that you don't have the “Mono” option available in your sound preferences (otherwise this doesn't make sense).

2.- In a terminal we execute the following to obtain the name of our «sink».

pacmd list-sinks | grepname

3.- Now we re-map the audio output by loading the corresponding module, passing it the necessary parameters. Note that in "master" we must specify the name of our "sink".

pacmd load-module module-remap-sink sink_name = mono master = alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.5.analog-stereo channels = 2 channel_map = mono, mono

4.- Ready, the re-mapped option (Mono) should already appear in the sound preferences

NOTE: Do not leave the volume (of the volume control) too high since when leaving for one place what used to leave for two will cause a horrible distortion.

Permanent fix (persists even after restarting Pulseaudio)

This was the part that cost me the most since in / var / log / syslog Pulseaudio it gave me several errors ...

To make this permanent you must edit the /etc/pulse/default.pa file

And add two lines to the end of the file like the ones seen below. Remember to master your sink and not mine:

# Load the module and re-map
load-module module-remap-sink master = alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.5.analog-stereo sink_name = mono channels = 2 channel_map = mono, mono
# Select the new default mapping
set-default-sink mono

Ready with that should be enough for Pulseaudio to use a mono audio output instead of stereo. Before any problem, remember to check the log of your system to detect the cause of the problem.

NOTE: these lines must go to the end of the file, to make sure that the module module-udev-detect (in charge of loading the necessary drivers automatically) is loaded prior to its execution. Otherwise it would give an error since when indicating to Pulseaudio the device when we “re-map” it, it would not recognize it.

9 comments, leave yours

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  1.   Jairot Llopis said

    And isn't it easier to drag the balance bar all the way to the left?

  2.   Seba said

    It worked thanks !!

  3.   James boiler said

    You spent compa 😉

  4.   farru said

    Thanks a lot! I have a broken laptop speaker and I was fed up with not being able to listen to music properly.

    Just one more question: the maximum volume using the mono output is much lower than using the stereo output. Can it be modified so that the maximum volume is the same?

  5.   Fernando said

    Saving my life in 3,2,1 😀
    Thank you very much, it worked!

  6.   let's use linux said

    Once again, DL to the rescue!
    A hug! Paul

  7.   Adolf Rivas said

    Good afternoon. I am new to Linux. This tutorial helped me to enable mono sound, but cannot save changes with the suggested commands. The reason is that at the end I don't know how to open it that says "desktop" as it appears in the image. Entering the commands without changing the terminal to "desktop" tells me that it does not exist. I would appreciate your help in finalizing the mono sound setup on my computer. Thank you

    1.    Gian said

      What distro do you use? maybe you don't have vim, try 'nano' and 'sudo':

      sudo nano /etc/pulse/default.pa

  8.   Kevin Hernandez said

    I would like to change a stereo audio input to mono, since to use the microphone I have to lower the volume of L, but when the microphone is muted in some program the audio is raised again in L, so I would like to block that channel permanently . This happens regardless of whether or not I lock the channels in Pulseaudio. Does this method work for me? And if this is how I could do it?