Arch Linux

johannesg00

Member

Registered: 2010-11-30

Posts: 74

5.1 sound issues

Hello,

i have an board with an intel z68 chipset and connected the analog 5.1 audio signal to my speakers.
when i listen to music in amarok everything is fine. when i mute the rear spekers in alsamixer they are muted, so everything is right assigned.
but when i run "speker-test -c 6" or play an 5.1 ac3 file in mplayer (mplayer audio.ac3 -channels 6), i hear the sound for the rear speakers in the front speakers. all other channels stay soundless...
does anybody have an idea what is wrong with my config?

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: 5.1 sound issues

That's the wrong command. You're sending the output to "default" (the default, obviously) which is only the 2 front speakers.

Proper command is:
speaker-test -c 6 -D surround51 -t wav

johannesg00

Member

Registered: 2010-11-30

Posts: 74

Re: 5.1 sound issues

this command doesn't work...

speaker-test -c 6 -D surround51 -t wav

speaker-test 1.0.25

Wiedergabe-Gerät ist surround51
Stream-Parameter sind 48000 Hz, S16_LE, 6 Kanäle
WAV-Datei(en)
Fehler beim Öffnen des Gerätes: -16, Das Gerät oder die Ressource ist belegt

sorry, the output is in german, it is "error opening device -16, the device or resource is busy" in english

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: 5.1 sound issues

Probably the usual story of some other app having already opened ALSA in stereo. See my ~/.asoundrc for my solution - a dmix that works.

johannesg00

Member

Registered: 2010-11-30

Posts: 74

Re: 5.1 sound issues

with your .asoundrc mplayer and the speaker test work fine, but it isn't possible to play sounds in two programms at the same time...
and the stereo sound of amarok isn't upmixed to 5.1
in the kde control panel i selected "7.1 analog output" as default device... because 5.1 isn't available

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: 5.1 sound issues

So the first question is, WTF is your stupid KDE doing? (Hehe, I don't use KDE.)

If you want to use surround71, then get it defined in your ~/.asoundrc, just like e.g. surround51 - to redirect to "dmixed", and then change "dmixed" to be 8 channels rather than 6. Otherwise, of course, you're not using dmixed and it's not surprising that you have a problem.

But that would be wrong - you need to get KDE to be correct, using 5.1 which is correct for your hardware.

Is KDE butting into the sound-outputting game, and messing it up? I hear it likes to do that.