How to play music in the CLI with an equalizer

published: 2020-04-10

1. Install VLC.

sudo apt install vlc

2. Open VLC and drag some music in.
3. While playing some music, open the Tools > Effects and Filters menu. Play around with the presets until you find one that sounds good.
4. Write down the name of the preset you used and then close VLC.
5. In a terminal, cd to where the music you want to play is.
6. In that terminal, execute this command:

cvlc --equalizer-preset=INSERT_PRESET_NAME_HERE -I ncurses *.flac

INSERT_PRESET_NAME_HERE should be in all lowercase. For example, the “Headphones” preset (which is what I use) would be --equalizer-preset=headphones.

The full list of valid possibilities is:

• flat
• classical
• club
• dance
• fullbass
• fullbasstreble
• fulltreble
• headphones
• largehall
• live
• party
• pop
• reggae
• rock
• ska
• soft
• softrock
• techno

If your files are MP3 or some other format, replace the flac in *.flac with the actual file type.

7. Press the “h” key to open the help menu, which will show you the player controls.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 © Vane Vander