Arch Linux

mylux

Member

Registered: 2012-03-03

Posts: 19

Can't get 4.1 working with ALSA and Intel card

Hello everybody,
My problem is simple, but I cannot find any solution for it.
I have Arch Linux 64 bits installed with ALSA and a Intel onboard sound card
I can get the audio working simply installing ALSA and unmutting the channels, but I get no sound at the rear speakers and the center speaker (subwoofer).
I run:

$ spearker-test -c 5

And all I have is sound at the 2 front speakers.

Looking at alsamixer I only saw configuration for 2,4 and 6 channels. I am currently using the configuration for 4 channels.
I unmuted everything in alsamixer (playback) and nothing changed.

$ aplay -l

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC888 Analog [ALC888 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC888 Digital [ALC888 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

$ lsmod | grep '^snd' | column -t

snd_hda_codec_hdmi     23704  1
snd_hda_codec_realtek  59331  1
snd_hda_intel          25700  7
snd_hda_codec          97464  3   snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep              6300   1   snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm                74926  3   snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel
snd_page_alloc         7217   2   snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel
snd_timer              18966  1   snd_pcm
snd                    60021  21  snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel

Anyone knows how to make it work? Thanks!

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Can't get 4.1 working with ALSA and Intel card

You probably want the configuration for *6* channels - obviously, 4 is not enough to output 5 channels.

Test with:

speaker-test -t wav -c 5 -D surround41

It's necessary to specify surround41, otherwise the default (conveniently named "default") is only stereo.

mylux

Member

Registered: 2012-03-03

Posts: 19

Re: Can't get 4.1 working with ALSA and Intel card

Thanks for the answer, tried this command, here is the output:

$ speaker-test -t wav -c 5 -D surround41

speaker-test 1.0.26

Playback device is surround41
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 5 channels
WAV file(s)
Broken configuration for playback: no configurations available: Invalid argument
Setting of hwparams failed: Invalid argument

Is there something needed to make this command run correctly?