5.1 sound issues - Ubuntu 8.10

Hi there,

Well now if anyone is keen to help it would be much appreciated...I'm getting kinda frustrated here and am willing to dig as deep as I can to solve this but I am running out of ideas.

Long story short, I don't really know what has changed but I am getting sound from only the two front speakers from my 5.1 sound setup.

speaker-test -l1 -c6 -twav

speaker-test 1.0.17

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 6 channels
WAV file(s)
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 32 to 349525
Period size range from 10 to 116509
Using max buffer size 349524
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 87381
was set buffer_size = 349524
0 - Front Left
4 - Center
1 - Front Right
3 - Rear Right
2 - Rear Left
5 - LFE
Time per period = 8.812011

Click to expand...

From the test above all sounds play fine but they only come out of the front two speakers as you can see it is set to 6 channels.

I followed Linomans blog but it didn't work. By the way in the blog asoundc file...does this file actually exist? gedit seems to open a new file as asoundc is totally blank before adding the lines from the blog :/ anyway this may be beside the point.

So anything else I can try??

Master 100%
PCM 100%
Surround 100%
Center 100%
LFE 100%

Duplicate front (gets the two rear speakers to join in and play mp3's if activated but thats it)
External amp (does nothing on or off)
Surround Jack mode (does nothing shared or independent)
Channel mode (6ch)
IEC958 Playback source (Is set to analog in now but does nothing it seems)

***Me wonders off to do more googling and reading at this daft hour )

Jonny Two Shoes said:

Hi there,

Well now if anyone is keen to help it would be much appreciated...I'm getting kinda frustrated here and am willing to dig as deep as I can to solve this but I am running out of ideas.

Long story short, I don't really know what has changed but I am getting sound from only the two front speakers from my 5.1 sound setup.



From the test above all sounds play fine but they only come out of the front two speakers as you can see it is set to 6 channels.

I followed Linomans blog but it didn't work. By the way in the blog asoundc file...does this file actually exist? gedit seems to open a new file as asoundc is totally blank before adding the lines from the blog :/ anyway this may be beside the point.

So anything else I can try??

Master 100%
PCM 100%
Surround 100%
Center 100%
LFE 100%

Duplicate front (gets the two rear speakers to join in and play mp3's if activated but thats it)
External amp (does nothing on or off)
Surround Jack mode (does nothing shared or independent)
Channel mode (6ch)
IEC958 Playback source (Is set to analog in now but does nothing it seems)

***Me wonders off to do more googling and reading at this daft hour )

Click to expand...

Did you save the file as ~/.asoundrc or ~/.asoundc ? It should be the first one. If that doesn't work, try ~/.asound.conf

Thanks for reply sn3rd....

Something is up here and I don't know if it is my Linux noobness showing but I just discovered something:

speaker-test -c 6 -D surround51 (This command plays through all speakers)
speaker-test -l1 -c6 -twav (This command does what I described in original post)

I have added the following in /home/.asoundrc already just for interest sake:
pcm.ch51dup {
slave.pcm surround51
slave.channels 6
type route
ttable.0.0 1
ttable.1.1 1
ttable.0.2 1
ttable.1.3 1
ttable.0.4 0.5
ttable.1.4 0.5
ttable.0.5 0.5
ttable.1.5 0.5
}

So whats up with those sound test commands anyway?

Well it appears my 5.1 is actually working and I didn't know it? Now to figure out how to get rhythmbox to play through all speakers

I have also just added this to rc.local and I am about to reboot..wish luck

# vi /etc/rc.local

...
echo Setting 5.1 Channel volumes...
amixer -q set Master 100% unmute
amixer -q set PCM 40% unmute
amixer -q set Surround 100% unmute
amixer -q set "Surround Jack Mode" "Independent"
amixer -q set Center 81% unmute
amixer -q set LFE 100% unmute
amixer -q set "Mic select" "Mic1"
amixer -q set "Mic" 65% unmute
amixer -q set "Channel mode" "6ch"
amixer -q set "Center/LFE Down mix" mute
amixer -q set "Duplicate Front" mute

exit 0

Have you tried a DVD?

Maybe check your MP3 player to see if alsa is correctly configured? Try playing the MP3 through a movie player that you know works on a DVD's 5.1 to see what happens.

Thanks

I figure that it is the player that is not configured for 5.1 so at least I know my surround sound is working properly

Something strange has happened to my linux now :/

After the reboot it went straight to command prompt. Thank goodness I remembered the "startx" command gives me an error once X is started saying something about the fast user switching app gone wrong. eish does it after every reboot now.

Anyway I reckon I will download a better player or figure out how to get rhythmbox to play through all speakers soon.

Wait wait wait, Jonny have you configure your Ubuntu to use Pulse Audio instead of Alsa?

Once that is done do the following to Pulse Audio

Go to a terminal and type the following. Excluding the inverted commas:

"sudo gedit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf"

Go down to the line that says " ;default-sample-channels = 2"

Change it so it looks like the following:

"default-sample-channels = 6"

Save and exit.

Now you should be getting audio from all of your speakers.

Setting it up with the asound.conf file (ALSA etc)

The file at default is blank, however I have noticed it is better to rather use Pulse Audio as your sound server. Doing what I posted in the above guide should work.

If not let us know.

Thank you Linoman I will try it and give feedback