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#1 2009-12-12 17:54:43

jackmetal
Member
From: US
Registered: 2005-06-13
Posts: 164

How to get Surround Sound 7.1 output out of all speakers?

Hi all...   I moved my system from Ubuntu recently and am having one small issue that I haven't been able to solve; everything else is working great and I'm about ready to move all of my other systems to Arch also, once I've solved this.  :-)

The one nagging issue I'm having is with sound.  This is a fiber digital connection that was working on the ubuntu install and a couple other distros I play with, but I haven't been able to find the issue in Arch.  Sound comes out of only the front-left and front-right speakers.  When I do the sound test, it lists all of the other 7.1 speakers, but no sound out of anything other than the front 2 speakers.  I noticed that I don't have an asound.conf, so I was wondering if that might help or if it's not needed with Arch? 

sound.conf contains the following:

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel  
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel

/proc/asound/cards contains:

 0 [Intel          ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel                           
                      HDA Intel at 0xf9cf4000 irq 22

arecord -L shows:

default:CARD=Intel                                                    
    HDA Intel, ALC1200 Analog                                         
    Default Audio Device                                              
front:CARD=Intel,DEV=0                                                
    HDA Intel, ALC1200 Analog                                         
    Front speakers                                                    
surround40:CARD=Intel,DEV=0                                           
    HDA Intel, ALC1200 Analog                                         
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers                    
surround41:CARD=Intel,DEV=0                                           
    HDA Intel, ALC1200 Analog                                         
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers         
surround50:CARD=Intel,DEV=0                                           
    HDA Intel, ALC1200 Analog                                         
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers            
surround51:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC1200 Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC1200 Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC1200 Digital
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)

If anyone has any pointers, it would really be appreciated.  I'm begging for help.  ;-)


--

Some of the world's greatest feats were
accomplished by people not smart enough
to know they were impossible.
-- Doug Larson

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#2 2009-12-12 18:22:38

majiq
Member
Registered: 2009-03-06
Posts: 259

Re: How to get Surround Sound 7.1 output out of all speakers?

I've never had to deal with true surround sound on a system, but I imagine part of the problem is that the applications you're using don't specify sound channels for the other speakers. In Ubuntu, it probably split output between the other 5 outputs for you. Try http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=79820 or http://www.halfgaar.net/surround-sound-in-linux .

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#3 2009-12-12 18:32:46

jackmetal
Member
From: US
Registered: 2005-06-13
Posts: 164

Re: How to get Surround Sound 7.1 output out of all speakers?

Thanks!  :LOL: - those were 2 of the url's I've been looking through (in addition to the alsa faq, some stuff on the ubuntu, gentoo and xbmc forums). 

I've setup an asound.conf and am about to give that a test. 


--edit--
Well, that didn't solve it.  I'll have to keep trying.  :-(
If anyone has managed to get surround sound working out of more than just the front 2 speakers, I'd love to hear how you did it.  ;-)
Mine is connected via digital, so it's beginning to look like I need to set spdif up somehow.

But... Now that I think about it, it 'should' be pretty easy since all I basically need is for it to force all raw audio out the fiber digital connection since the receiver actually handles all of the decoding (dang....it worked great in Ubuntu, now if I can just figure it out in Arch). LOL
Thanks!!

Last edited by jackmetal (2009-12-12 20:43:32)


--

Some of the world's greatest feats were
accomplished by people not smart enough
to know they were impossible.
-- Doug Larson

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