Balance/bass/treble controls for MediaPlayer entities

Feature Requests
1

This originally came up as a request by a few people to add balance/bass/treble controls to the Xantech/Dayton Audio/Monoprice/etc integrations but it is equally applicable to other receivers/pre-amps as it is is a very common feature among media devices/streamers/etc.

Rather than post a reply in that thread, I figured I’d put this in the main features forum in case anyone is interested in contributing this to Home Assistant. I don’t have the time right now to do the proper amount of testing, but the following lays out the rough set of changes needed.

The bass/treble/balance controls would best be implemented on media_player base classes/services built-into Home Assistant itself.

The rough steps someone would need to contribute to Home Assistant for this to work:

  1. Add to MediaPlayerEntityFeature in const.py
BALANCE_STEP = 4194304
BASE_STEP = 8388608
TREBLE_STEP = 16777216

As well as the service constants:

SERVICE_BALANCE_LEFT = ‘balance_left’
SERVICE_BALANCE_RIGHT = ‘balance_right’
SERVICE_BASS_UP = ‘bass_up’
SERVICE_BASS_DOWN = ‘bass_down’
SERVICE_TREBLE_UP = ‘treble_up’
SERVICE_TREBLE_DOWN = ‘treble_down’
  1. Add to services.yaml:
balance_left:
  target:
    entity:
      domain: media_player
      supported_features:
        - media_player.MediaPlayerEntityFeature.BALANCE_STEP

balance_right:
  target:
    entity:
      domain: media_player
      supported_features:
        - media_player.MediaPlayerEntityFeature.BALANCE_STEP

bass_up:
  target:
    entity:
      domain: media_player
      supported_features:
        - media_player.MediaPlayerEntityFeature.BASS_STEP

bass_down:
  target:
    entity:
      domain: media_player
      supported_features:
        - media_player.MediaPlayerEntityFeature.BASS_STEP

treble_up:
  target:
    entity:
      domain: media_player
      supported_features:
        - media_player.MediaPlayerEntityFeature.TREBLE_STEP

treble_down:
  target:
    entity:
      domain: media_player
      supported_features:
        - media_player.MediaPlayerEntityFeature.TREBLE_STEP
  1. Add the new services registered in init.py Will need to add some imports as well from const.py.
    component.async_register_entity_service(
        SERVICE_BALANCE_LEFT,
        {},
        "async_balance_left",
        [MediaPlayerEntityFeature.BALANCE_STEP,
    )

    component.async_register_entity_service(
        SERVICE_BALANCE_RIGHT,
        {},
        "async_balance_right",
        [MediaPlayerEntityFeature.BALANCE_STEP,
    )

    component.async_register_entity_service(
        SERVICE_BASS_UP,
        {},
        "async_bass_up”,
        [MediaPlayerEntityFeature.BASS_STEP,
    )

    component.async_register_entity_service(
        SERVICE_BASS_DOWN,
        {},
        "async_bass_down”,
        [MediaPlayerEntityFeature.BASS_STEP,
    )

    component.async_register_entity_service(
        SERVICE_TREBLE__UP,
        {},
        "async_treble_up”,
        [MediaPlayerEntityFeature.TREBLE_STEP,
    )

    component.async_register_entity_service(
        SERVICE_TREBLE_DOWN,
        {},
        "async_treble-down”,
        [MediaPlayerEntityFeature.TREBLE_STEP,
    )

And then add for all of the above the async methods that are registered, like the following:

    async def async_balance_left(self) -> None:
        “””Adjust the balance left for media player.

        This method is a coroutine.
        """
        if hasattr(self, “balance_left”):
            await self.hass.async_add_executor_job(self.balance_left)
            return


    async def async_bass_up(self) -> None:
        “””Adjust the bass up for media player.

        This method is a coroutine.
        """
        if hasattr(self, “bass_up”):
            await self.hass.async_add_executor_job(self.bass_up)
            return

That’s the rough changes needed for a really great addition to MediaPlayer for Home Assistant. Then individual integrations can start adding actual implementations of this to support it for a specific device.

2

Ideally, the above change would also include service APIs to directly set bass/balance/treble by adding set of MediaPlayerEntityFeature support flags (BASS_SET, BALANCE_SET, TREBLE_SET).

This needs to be different support flags than the _STEP features since it seems more common for devices to support step but not the direct setting of the value for tone controls.

3

Very nice start. However, it depends on the depth/target of the integration in core. The pseudo code above combines somewhat surround sound concepts and stereo concepts.

Stereo is basically Balance, Treble, Bass (which is what I put into the Stereo multiplexer integration for my own code) because that is all I needed. You can move sound to left/right and increase/decrease bass and treble delivered to the speakers.

Surround Sound = much more complex. Balance left/right on rear, balance left/right on front, balance front/back, throw on center, and I am sure many more (like controlling subwoofer, etc.). I am by no means a surround sound expert and I really do not have a need, I play music in Stereo and that is all I need.

Just my opinion but trying to replicate a complete controller for sound equalization and tuning for surround sound systems is 10x the complexity for stereo.

This enhancement should be targeting stereo-based media players and not full blown surround sound unit media_players.

4

Would very much appreciate this too!

5

Agreed, my suggestion above was for typical stereo controls on most receivers/pre-amps/matrix devices. More complex multi-channel controls/room correction is another whole topic and design.

Many of the existing built-in integrations to Home Assistant (for example, Monoprice, Anthem, etc) would all benefit from having balance/tone controls.

1 Like
6

As some integrations (at least) have already done it would not be part of the media player entity itself but as a number entity.