Ok, for all who trouble with audacious in Ubunutu, this seemed to work to fix the EQ:
1. Download the Winamp preset EQ's
2. Open up terminal
3. wget http://www.xmms.org/misc/winamp_presets.gz
4. To install the presets for the Audacious media player type:
gunzip -c winamp_presets.gz > ~/.config/audacious/eq.preset
Restart Audacious. Now heres the sticker. What I think happens is Audaciou's Pre-Amp (to the left on EQ), is pushing too much Hz (?) through the audio channel. Now, I do use the ALSA mixer, as nvidia's fails to work by default on my 8.04 machine. I don't believe it matters if your using ALSA or not, I believe this to be tied to linnux + sound cards in general.
Select a Winamp preamp, and turn on the EQ to ON. WOW! Its loud and fuzzy you say! Well turn the Pre-amp down slightly until the tinnyness and garble subsidees. Many a times I just turn off the preamp.
I am quite certain the preamp messes with the EQ in terms of the Base dB's (decibel) frequency. Think of if you've ever used Adobe Premiere, raising the dB too high and what, tiny crackly , or fuzzy audio! The same goes for a guitar amp, turn up the pre-amp (your amp) too high, then plug in a external effect pedal and turn up the sound and voila, crackly ****** audio.
Please reply if help is needed or if you have better methods. This worked for me to use the eq as I want. If you have trouble with anything else try going to your sound prefs. and using the ALSA mixer.
Note!!!: If you use Ubuntu / Debian, I specially added the "Gnome-Alsamixer" to my arsenal as well. This allows you to change Master, and sub level audio tracks without the terminal. This will let you bump up you base master volume without destroying anything. The default audio applet on the top gnome panel bar only raises it so much. Find this program in Add/Remove Programs, or do "sudo apt-get install gnome-alsamixer "
Cheers!
Nano
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