Only half my speakers play

urza9814 · 2011-12-27 19:35:10

So I've got this new laptop that came with "beats audio"...the only real benefit of which is that it has four speakers instead of the usual two -- it has one pair down by the trackpad, and another up by the screen. Under Windows, all four of these work when I'm playing anything, but on Linux only the two by the trackpad have any output. I've tried going into the pulseaudio mixer and setting it to 4.0 rather than stereo (I've tried every setting I have -- analog stereo output, analog stereo duplex, and analog surround 4.0 output) with no luck.

soundcard info:

[urza9814@myhost ~]$ lspci | grep -i audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)

[urza9814@myhost ~]$ lsmod | grep -i snd
snd_hda_codec_hdmi     22821  1 
snd_hda_codec_idt      56605  1 
snd_hda_intel          22410  2 
snd_hda_codec          81242  3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep               6357  1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm                74368  3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_timer              19544  1 snd_pcm
snd                    58362  11 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore               6210  1 snd
snd_page_alloc          7153  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm

And if it matters at all I'm using KDE with the VLC backend into Pulseaudio

Sound does work, of course, just only out of half of the speakers, and I'd like to get that fixed as I can't get it nearly as loud in Linux without clipping as I can under Windows.

brebs · 2011-12-27 21:40:39

Google for your laptop model and the magic word "ALSA", and see if you can find Linux users who have got all 4 speakers running.

urza9814 · 2011-12-27 23:27:22

Yes, I did quite a bit of googling both before posting this and since, but haven't been able to find anyone even discussing this issue. For what it's worth, it's an HP dv6 laptop. I found a few discussions of no audio at all on this model, tried those solutions anyway with no success.

urza9814 · 2011-12-31 02:02:34

Hmm. I've determined that setting the snd_hda_intel module with the option 'model=auto' (which I assumed was the default, but apparently not...) gives me sound from the top two speakers; that's the only one I've found that makes any difference though. Otherwise I just get the bottom two. Found someone else with a similar problem on the next model laptop up (dv7), they managed to get all four working with 'model=ref' and setting the output to 'analog headphone', but unfortunately it seems the audio systems are slightly different, as that's not working on mine. I'm assuming there's not a damn thing I can do but just keep trying different models and hope one works; I'll update this if I find it in case anyone else has this problem...but if anyone's got any suggestions better than trial and error, they'd be greatly appreciated. At the moment I've resorted to coding up a shell script that will go through and test every last damn one, as none of the ones that I would expect might work have, so I'm just hoping maybe there's one that that will just happen to work...

Last edited by urza9814 (2011-12-31 03:10:11)

tgoossens · 2012-04-14 15:31:22

Is your problem solved now?

Arch Linux

#1 2011-12-27 19:35:10

Only half my speakers play

#2 2011-12-27 21:40:39

Re: Only half my speakers play

#3 2011-12-27 23:27:22

Re: Only half my speakers play

#4 2011-12-31 02:02:34

Re: Only half my speakers play

#5 2012-04-14 15:31:22

Re: Only half my speakers play

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