Can't force audio output to be mono (if deaf in one ear)

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

If you are deaf in one ear, it is a useful accessibility enhancement to flatten stereo output to mono.

Ideally this would be an explicit option in the "Hearing" tab of the System Settings "Universal Access" panel, cross-linked from the Sound settings.

In the meantime, though, it would be relatively simple to make this selectable in the "Mode" menu in the Sound panel's "Output" tab, when it otherwise wouldn't be selectable, and to document it as an accessibility feature in the help.

[David (david.regev)]

This is also useful if one of your speakers in dead.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[David Henningsson (diwic)]

The mono profile is usually thrown away as most hardware does not support opening it in one-channel mode only.

You can configure pulseaudio to do what you suggest by modifying
/usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/profile-sets/default.conf
and
/usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/profile-sets/extra-hdmi.conf

In both files, go to the [Mapping analog-mono] section and change
channel-map = mono
to
channel-map = mono,mono

This will take effect the next time pulseaudio is restarted (e g by rebooting).

The *major* question is however, whether we should do this by default, and if we risk regressing other hardware by doing so.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

How is this Invalid for gnome-control-center? It would need a checkbox in the Sound and/or Universal Access settings.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.