Arch Linux

Immorally0998

Member

Registered: 2022-08-25

Posts: 2

Can't get Digital Surround 5.1 (IRC958/AC3) to work

I've recently moved over to using Arch based distros, initially Arch, then Manjaro, Endeavour, now back to Arch. In every instance I've been unable to get Digital Surround 5.1 (IRC958/AC3) to work. Digital Stereo (IEC958) + Mono Input works flawlessly.

The headset I'm using is a Corsair Vituoso. In each install once I've switched to 5.1 any time there is meant to be noise (such as a video, testing the speakers, etc.) there's an awfully loud crackling/rattling sound that comes out which then stops (after the sound itself is stopped, i.e. hitting pause on a video).

I've removed alsa-utils alsa-firmware which has stopped the rattling sound, however now when I switch over to Digital Surround 5.1 (IRC958/AC3) I now get no noise. Furthermore when I try to test the noise the system settings just freezes up and I have to force close the program. For things such as a game or playing a video, no sound gets played at all.

For what it's worth, I'm running Arch with KDE - fresh system so everything is up to date. Standard linux kernel.

If there's anything I need to run to output (I don't even know where to start) I'll be more than happy to paste the results. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Last edited by Immorally0998 (2022-08-25 22:17:31)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,778

Re: Can't get Digital Surround 5.1 (IRC958/AC3) to work

Do you want everything to be encoded to AC3 or are you just looking to play actual AC3 sources correctly? The former is somewhat of a pain and requires going over an ALSA bridge encoder plugin that was quite buggy and should be working better currently, there's a thread about this I can try to dig up. The latter you can simply enable passthrough for the format in question by going to the advanced settings of the digital sink in pavucontrol and ticking the relevant boxes.

For the former, while I didn't find the thread I was originally thinking of I found https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comm … &context=3 which might be relevantly relevant to enable encoding of arbitrary sources.

FWIW I did find the thread I was thiking about: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=251467&p=4 and if I'm reading that correctly this should work properly with the current stack without the above tool from reddit assuming you have alsa-plugins installed.

Last edited by V1del (2022-08-25 13:48:21)

Immorally0998

Member

Registered: 2022-08-25

Posts: 2

Re: Can't get Digital Surround 5.1 (IRC958/AC3) to work

Do you want everything to be encoded to AC3 or are you just looking to play actual AC3 sources correctly?

I... don't know? To be brutally honest all I really want is for my games to be playing in 5.1 surround (i.e. CS:GO) like I could when running windows.

I'll check out the links you've provided. Thank you.

Also I don't know if it's relevant but the headset is plugged in via USB, not an audio or AUX connection.