Hello, I have a question about the audio on mpv/Celluloid v Strawberry. The sound is much better on my laptop playing files in Strawberry. This goes for mp3 files and also if I use ffmpeg to make a mp3 out of a video file (an interview, for example).
I’ve tried before to figure out how to load a mpv config file for Celluloid, but mpv has so many options that I got lost.
Does anyone have any suggestions on things I could try to make the sound on mpv/Celluloid better?
Thanks!
For MPV only
To make mpv sound like Strawberry on Linux, you can configure mpv to use similar audio settings and options. You made me write a mini novel…lol
Strawberry is known for its high-quality audio playback, and you can achieve similar results with mpv by adjusting a few settings.
mpv --audio-device='name of your DAC'
Replace ‘name of your DAC’ with the actual name of your Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC).
audio-samplerate=44100
audio-format=s16le
Adjust the sample rate and format to match your DAC’s capabilities.
``
audio-resample=no
* Use High-Quality Audio Filters: If you want to apply any audio filters, ensure they are of high quality. For example, you can use the equalizer filter:
`af=equalizer=0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0`
* Configure mpv for Gapless Playback: Strawberry supports gapless playback, which you can enable in mpv:
`gapless-audio=yes`
Use the Same Audio Output Module: Strawberry might use a specific audio output module for better performance.
* You can specify the same module in mpv:
`audio-output=alsa`
Adjust Volume and Balance: If you prefer to match the volume and balance settings of
* Strawberry, you can set these in mpv:
volume=100
balance=0
By applying these settings, you can configure mpv to have a similar audio experience to Strawberry on Linux.
You can add these options to your `~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf` file for persistent configuration.
Good LuckHi 1fallen, your post is so wonderful, thank you! I’m going to print it out and start working on it, but I will probably only have time over the weekend, so I’ll have to report back then.
I’m very glad you said “Strawberry is known for its high-quality audio playback” since it confirms my suspicions. Honestly, I’ll be in laptop audio heaven if I can get mpv/Celluloid to match Strawberry or at least come close.
Thanks again!
This seems like a lot of tinkering for MPV, is there any reason you don’t like or just use Strawberry? Just curious is all. 
This setting works on my end:
mpv --audio-device=alsa/pipewire '/home/me/Music/The Cult - The Singles 1984-1995 (2000) [MP3 320] 88/06. Revolution.mp3'
● Image --vid=1 (mjpeg 250x248)
○ Image --vid=2 'folder.jpg' (mjpeg 250x248) [external]
● Audio --aid=1 (mp3 2ch 44100 Hz 320 kbps)
File tags:
Artist: The Cult
Album: Pure Cult: The Singles 1984-1995
Album_Artist: The Cult
Comment: Exact Audio Copy V1.0b3
Date: 2000
Genre: Hard Rock
Title: Revolution
Track: 06
Displaying cover art. Use --no-audio-display to prevent this.
VO: [gpu] 250x248 yuv420p
AO: [alsa] 44100Hz stereo 2ch float
AV: 00:00:53 / 00:04:17 (21%)
wpctl status|grep mpv
112. PipeWire ALSA [mpv] [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:329738]
105. PipeWire ALSA [mpv]
wpctl status
PipeWire ‘pipewire-0’ [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, cookie:1850068055]
└─ Clients:
32. WirePlumber [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:4994]
33. pipewire [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:5008]
37. pipewire [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:5008]
39. pipewire [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:5008]
48. WirePlumber [export] [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:4994]
49. gnome-shell [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:4733]
50. GNOME Shell Volume Control [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:4733]
51. GNOME Volume Control Media Keys [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:4865]
96. wpctl [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:435191]
98. xdg-desktop-portal [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:5283]
101. Mutter [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:4733]
103. libcanberra [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:4865]
112. PipeWire ALSA [mpv] [1.4.2, me@cachyos-gnome, pid:428140]
Audio
├─ Devices:
│ 52. GA107 High Definition Audio Controller [alsa]
│ 53. UOEOS Laptop Dock [alsa]
│ 54. Family 17h/19h/1ah HD Audio Controller [alsa]
│
├─ Sinks:
│ 58. UOEOS Laptop Dock Analog Surround 4.1 [vol: 0.89]
│
├─ Sources:
│
├─ Filters:
│ - combine-sink-5008-13
│ * 41. combined [Audio/Sink]
│ 59. output.combined_alsa_output.usb-DisplayLink_UOEOS_Laptop_Dock_4307293310436-02.analog-surround-41 [Stream/Output/Audio]
│ 67. output.combined_alsa_output.pci-0000_06_00.6.pro-output-0 [Stream/Output/Audio]
│ - pro-audio-1
│ 66. alsa_output.pci-0000_06_00.6.pro-output-0 [Audio/Sink]
│ * 83. alsa_input.pci-0000_06_00.6.pro-input-0 [Audio/Source]
│
└─ Streams:
102. PipeWire ALSA [mpv]
106. output_FR > combined:playback_FR [active]
107. output_FL > combined:playback_FL [active]
Video
├─ Devices:
│ 63. Integrated Camera [v4l2]
│ 64. Integrated Camera [v4l2]
│
├─ Sinks:
│
├─ Sources:
│ * 99. Integrated Camera (V4L2)
│
├─ Filters:
│
└─ Streams:
Settings
└─ Default Configured Devices:
0. Audio/Sink combined
Is it 1988?
Where did you get your Time Machine?
I have all my CD’s DVD’s backed up. The Cult is a keeper for me! 
They actually came to our town! Great Show.
@riverhawkny if you need any more help on the .config, I have a few, you might be interested in.
mpv --audio-device=alsa/pipewire https://stream.radioparadise.com/rock-320
Option --sub-ass-vsfilter-blur-compat was removed: replaced by sub-ass-use-video-data=all
Error parsing option sub-ass-vsfilter-blur-compat (option not found)
/home/me/.config/mpv/mpv.conf:63: setting option sub-ass-vsfilter-blur-compat='yes' failed.
cplayer: Auto-loading profile 'protocol.https'
_quality_menu: fetching available formats with youtube-dl...
quality_menu: fetching available formats with youtube-dl...
cplayer: ● Audio --aid=1 (aac 2ch 44100 Hz 319 kbps)
display-tags: File tags:
display-tags: icy-title: Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out
ao/alsa: The --audio-stream-silence option is set. This will break certain player behavior.
cplayer: AO: [alsa] 44100Hz stereo 2ch float
modernx: Changing title to include filename
modernx: WEB: Video is a web video
modernx: WEB: Loading filesize...
modernx: WEB: Loading description...
modernx: WEB: Loaded video description
display-tags: File tags:
display-tags: icy-title: The Black Keys - Howlin’ for You
display-tags: File tags:
display-tags: icy-title: Pearl Jam - Force of Nature
display-tags: File tags:
display-tags: icy-title: David Bowie - Panic in Detroit
display-tags: File tags:
display-tags: icy-title: Beck - Youthless
display-tags: File tags:
display-tags: icy-title: An Emotional Fish - Celebrate
display-tags: File tags:
display-tags: icy-title: Radiohead - Karma Police
display-tags: File tags:
display-tags: icy-title: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Burning
display-tags: File tags:
display-tags: icy-title: Commercial-free - Listener-supported
display-tags: File tags:
display-tags: icy-title: The Republic Tigers - Weatherbeaten
display-tags: File tags:
display-tags: icy-title: Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song
display-tags: File tags:
display-tags: icy-title: Bush - Everything Zen
ffmpeg/demuxer: aac: Packet corrupt (stream = 0, dts = NOPTS).
statusline: A: 00:32:59 / 00:33:09 (99%) Cache: 9.8s/608KB
cplayer: Exiting... (Quit)
Hello again, for years I used VLC, but it started choking on larger files last year so I switched to mpv, which does much better. But I think, out-of-the-box, VLC did better with sound than mpv. I generally download music stuff off of YouTube, so they are video files. Then, if I like a song, I’ll go get an audio file and use Strawberry.
This command didn’t work:
mpv --audio-device=alsa/pipewire '/home/ssd-01/3-media/kpop-songs/Brown Eyed Girls - Wave.flac'
Option audio-format: unknown format name: 's16le'
Error parsing option audio-format (option parameter could not be parsed)
/home/ssd-01/.config/mpv/mpv.conf:3: setting option audio-format='s16le' failed.
Error parsing option audio-resample (option not found)
/home/ssd-01/.config/mpv/mpv.conf:4: setting option audio-resample='no' failed.
Error parsing option audio-output (option not found)
/home/ssd-01/.config/mpv/mpv.conf:6: setting option audio-output='alsa' failed.
(+) Video --vid=1 [P] 'cover.jpg' (mjpeg 1200x1200 1.000fps)
(+) Audio --aid=1 (flac 2ch 44100Hz)
File tags:
Artist: Brown Eyed Girls
Album: Basic
Album_Artist: Brown Eyed Girls
Date: 2015-11-05
Genre: K-Pop
Title: Wave
Track: 3
Displaying cover art. Use --no-audio-display to prevent this.
VO: [gpu] 1200x1200 yuv420p
ALSA lib pcm.c:2721:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM pipewire
[ao/alsa] Playback open error: No such file or directory
[ao] Failed to initialize audio driver 'alsa'
[ao] This audio driver/device was forced with the --audio-device option.
[ao] Try unsetting it.
Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.
Audio: no audio
Exiting... (Interrupted by error)
Here’s my config so far:
#mpv --audio-device='name of your DAC'
audio-samplerate=44100
audio-format=s16le
audio-resample=no
gapless-audio=yes
audio-output=alsa
#af=equalizer=0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0
#volume=100
#balance=0
I’m a bit confused about locating my DAC. I looked it up and ran aplay -l and get the following:
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: 92HD93BXX Analog [92HD93BXX Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
I’m going to keep on working on it! I think maybe I will give an estimate of one or two weeks to figure all this Linux sound out.
Thank you everyone for all your suggestions. And please, any more suggestions would be very helpful. I remember when The Cult first came out. I was driving on the freeway in Los Angeles and they played it on KROQ. It was very great!
Could you also include what release your using, 20.04 22.045 24.04?
Also it looks like you may still be using Pulseaudio to see please show these:
systemctl --user status pulseaudio
### And
systemctl --user status pipewire
BTW this is my current config:
###########
###########
gpu-api=vulkan
##########
##########
#input-ipc-server=/tmp/mpvsocket
hr-seek-framedrop=no
no-resume-playback
border=no # recommended for ModernX OSC
msg-color=yes
msg-module=yes
autofit=85%x85% # Start mpv with a % smaller resolution of your screen
cursor-autohide=100 # Cursor hide in ms
###############
###############
screenshot-template=“%x/Screens/Screenshot-%F-T%wH.%wM.%wS.%wT-F%{estimated-frame-number}”
screenshot-format=png # Set screenshot format
screenshot-png-compression=4 # Range is 0 to 10. 0 being no compression.
screenshot-tag-colorspace=yes
screenshot-high-bit-depth=yes # Same output bitdepth as the video
###########
###########
osc=no # ‘no’ required for MordernX OSC
osd-bar=yes # Do not remove/comment if mpv_thumbnail_script_client_osc.lua is being used.
osd-font=‘Inter Tight Medium’ # Set a font for OSC
osd-font-size=30 # Set a font size
osd-color=‘#CCFFFFFF’ # ARGB format
osd-border-color=‘#DD322640’ # ARGB format
osd-bar-align-y=-1 # progress bar y alignment (-1 top, 0 centered, 1 bottom)
osd-border-size=2 # size for osd text and progress bar
osd-bar-h=1 # height of osd bar as a fractional percentage of your screen height
osd-bar-w=60 # width of " " "
########
########
blend-subtitles=no
sub-ass-vsfilter-blur-compat=yes # Backward compatibility for vsfilter fansubs
sub-ass-scale-with-window=no # May have undesired effects with signs being misplaced.
sub-auto=fuzzy # external subs don’t have to match the file name exactly to autoload
sub-file-paths-append=ass # search for external subs in these relative subdirectories
sub-file-paths-append=srt
sub-file-paths-append=sub
sub-file-paths-append=subs
sub-file-paths-append=subtitles
demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll=yes # try to correctly show embedded subs when seeking
embeddedfonts=yes # use embedded fonts for SSA/ASS subs
sub-fix-timing=no # do not try to fix gaps (which might make it worse in some cases). Enable if there are scenebleeds.
sub-font=Open Sans SemiBold
sub-font-size=46
sub-blur=0.3
sub-border-color=0.0/0.0/0.0/0.8
sub-border-size=3.2
sub-color=0.9/0.9/0.9/1.0
sub-margin-x=100
sub-margin-y=50
sub-shadow-color=0.0/0.0/0.0/0.25
sub-shadow-offset=0
#########
#########
volume-max=200 # maximum volume in %, everything above 100 results in amplification
audio-stream-silence # fix audio popping on random seek
audio-file-auto=fuzzy # external audio doesn’t has to match the file name exactly to autoload
audio-pitch-correction=yes # automatically insert scaletempo when playing with higher speed
alang=jpn,jp,eng,en,enUS,en-US,de,ger # Audio language priority
slang=eng,en,und,de,ger,jp,jap # Subtitle language priority
##################
##################
profile=high-quality # mpv --show-profile=gpu-hq
hwdec=auto-copy # enable hardware decoding, defaults to ‘no’
vo=gpu-next # GPU-Next: GPU Next vs GPU · mpv-player/mpv Wiki · GitHub
dither-depth=auto
deband=yes
deband-iterations=4
deband-threshold=35
deband-range=16
deband-grain=4
glsl-shader=“~~/shaders/ravu-zoom-ar-r3-rgb.hook” # good balance between performance and quality
scale=ewa_lanczos
scale-blur=0.981251
dscale=catmull_rom
correct-downscaling=yes
linear-downscaling=no
glsl-shader=“~~/shaders/CfL_Prediction.glsl”
cscale=lanczos
sigmoid-upscaling=yes
video-sync=display-resample
interpolation=yes
tscale=sphinx
tscale-blur=0.6991556596428412
tscale-radius=1.05
tscale-clamp=0.0
tone-mapping=bt.2446a
target-colorspace-hint=yes
############
############
deinterlace=no # global reset of deinterlacing to off
[default]
############################
############################
[protocol.http]
hls-bitrate=max # use max quality for HLS streams
cache=yes
no-cache-pause # don’t pause when the cache runs low
[protocol.https]
profile=protocol.http
[protocol.ytdl]
profile=protocol.http
Plays Video’s nicely as well.
My version of Ubuntu: 24.04.2 LTS (from Xubuntu).
Output from: systemctl --user status pulseaudio
○ pulseaudio.service - Sound Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service; enabled; preset: enab>
Active: inactive (dead)
TriggeredBy: ○ pulseaudio.socket
and from: systemctl --user status pipewire
● pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Wed 2025-04-23 11:03:38 EDT; 4h 21min ago
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire.socket
Main PID: 2002 (pipewire)
Tasks: 3 (limit: 9139)
Memory: 12.2M (peak: 12.9M)
CPU: 11.924s
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewire.service
└─2002 /usr/bin/pipewireApr 23 11:03:38 ssd-01-Latitude-E6430 systemd[1990]: Started pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service.
Apr 23 11:03:38 ssd-01-Latitude-E6430 pipewire[2002]: mod.jackdbus-detect: Failed to receive jackdbus reply: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.jackaudio.service was not provided by any .service files
Thank you for taking a look. Also, I got some printed material on Linux audio I plan on reading through over the next week or two.
Also, thanks for the config file! Its good to have a template to get started.