5.2. LADSPA plugins

One great feature of the program is that you can apply LADSPA plugins to the music. You can use the equalizer of your choice instead of a built-in one, along with other plugins. You can process your sound with Aqualung in ways that the author of this program never thought of. A recommended set is TAP-plugins.

Of course, faithful reproduction of music does not require or permit pervasive signal processing, since that is not the purpose of such activity. However, the technology is at your disposal and it's up to you to use or misuse it. It may be necessary to adapt your listening gear to the acoustic environment, using small amounts of equalization preferably in a subtractive manner. In addition to this, I also like to spice my tracks with a small amount of tubewarmth to feel that warm tube sound even with my transistor amplifiers, and to bring out even the finest details of the music.

The plugin chain you build is automatically saved and restored, so once you get it right for your listening environment, you should rarely need to touch it.

Some tricks concerning the LADSPA patch builder:

• Multiple plugins can be selected from the available plugins list and added at once by clicking on the Add button or pressing `a' or `A'.
• A single plugin can be added immediately by double-clicking it in the available plugins list.
• Plugins in the running list can be (un)bypassed with the middle mouse button.
• The configuration window of the running plugins can be brought up by double-clicking on them (same as clicking on the Configure button).
• If a plugin is selected in the running plugins list, pressing DELETE will remove it (same as pressing the Remove button).
• Running plugins can be rearranged at any time (changing the order in which they are processed) via dragging them with the mouse.
• In the configuration windows of plugins, setting input controls back to their default value is possible by shift-clicking on the slider. This does not work for toggled or integer inputs (those that don't have a slider displayed for them).