🎧 Easy Effects + PipeWire on ThinkPad L560: surprisingly great results on Zorin OS 17.3

Customization
, , ,
1

Screenshot from 2025-09-24 22-41-18
Screenshot from 2025-09-24 22-41-181366×768 66.7 KB

After migrating my Zorin OS 17.3 Core installation to an SSD on my ThinkPad L560 (i5-6300U, 16 GB RAM), I decided to go one step further and optimize the audio setup.
Based on a recommendation from ChatGPT, I installed Easy Effects (Flatpak) and confirmed I was running on PipeWire.

I enabled a light audio chain with:

  • Autogain
  • Bass Enhancer
  • Compressor

To my surprise, the improvement in sound clarity and volume balance was immediately noticeable — especially when streaming or playing multimedia.
Everything is running very smoothly under Wayland, and the performance impact is negligible.

What’s even more interesting is that Zorin OS 18 now ships with PipeWire enabled by default, which (in my opinion) confirms this is the right path forward for the distro.

Highly recommend this setup if you’re using older hardware — it makes a real difference without complexity.

@ milldale

:laptop: ThinkPad L560 – Zorin OS 17.3 Core – 16 GB RAM – SSD
:brain: Stable, streamlined and productive setup
:globe_with_meridians: Brave (Flatpak) · LibreOffice · Pipewire · Wayland

4 Likes
2

Looks good @milldale! I'm running on an Lenovo Legion 5 (and wish I'd thought to buy a ThinkPad instead!) And welcome to the community!

1 Like
3

Thanks @NoUsername ! I use my ThinkPad daily and works like a champ! I use to surf the web and chatgpt. I wish I had your legion 5, that way I could have my own local AI!

Also, thanks for the warm welcome — I already feel very much at home in this great community!

1 Like
4

Good morning
From the image above, it looks like you activated Auto Gain 4 times. Is that right? I thought you should only activate each effect once.

1 Like
5

Yes, that's right @Dunham, I found later that I had multiple autogains. As you mentioned just one is sufficient or as I found out, it excesses gains and produce an unnecessary and unpleasant sound.

6

@milldale
Thanks
Thank you