Arch Linux

gee

Member

Registered: 2006-11-29

Posts: 313

5.1, passthrough and concurrent utilisation on the sound system

Hi,

I've been pulling my hair for too long maybe you guys can help

I am trying to get 5.1, passthrough and dmix (or anything similar) with my HDMI output of the radeon card (RV770, radeon driver).

Whatever I do I can never get 5.1, and to get passthrough I need to kill any application currently using ALSA which I find not really acceptable...
I have only tested with ALSA (playing with asound.conf), but I have just been told that OSSv4 might work...

What do you guys use for that?

Thanks

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: 5.1, passthrough and concurrent utilisation on the sound system

Have you seen this thread.

gee

Member

Registered: 2006-11-29

Posts: 313

Re: 5.1, passthrough and concurrent utilisation on the sound system

I did try that before and still got no 5.1 output.

Thanks

gee

Member

Registered: 2006-11-29

Posts: 313

Re: 5.1, passthrough and concurrent utilisation on the sound system

I also tried OSSv4 and it did not even recognize my hdmi output

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: 5.1, passthrough and concurrent utilisation on the sound system

You've provided no debugging info whatsoever, so you're not exactly helping yourself here.

gee

Member

Registered: 2006-11-29

Posts: 313

Re: 5.1, passthrough and concurrent utilisation on the sound system

I am not sure what debugging information to provide...

I am running arch linux, kernel 2.6.35-ARCH x64 , alsa 1.023, X 1.9, xf86-video-ati 6.13.1-2.

I have installed everything with the official repos and also tried some special alsa files from here and there but never got anything.

It took me a lot of "work" to get a good asound.conf to get both dmix and passthrough working but when I reinstalled I forgot to keep the file... but I could never get non-passthrough 5.1 although I can in windows so the hardware part is good...

My current asound.conf is a simple:
Quote:
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave {
pcm {
type hw
card 0
device 3
}
}
}

aplay -L gives this after deactivating the motherboard sound card:
Quote:
null
Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
hdmi:CARD=HDMI
HDA ATI HDMI, ATI HDMI
HDMI Audio Output
because I am targetting first 5.1 than dmix now...

Although when I had dmix and passthrough in the past, I needed to kill every app using ALSA to get passthrough, which is really overkill.

I have tried many guides here and on other websites, but none of them seem to target radeon cards, I wonder why.

The best way for me to try 5.1 has been speaker-test but I NEVER got a 5.1 setup... it's only 2.0 ....

Anything else?

gee

Member

Registered: 2006-11-29

Posts: 313

Re: 5.1, passthrough and concurrent utilisation on the sound system

I tried with the catalyst driver but still no go.
I tried pulse and same.

Now interesting thing, when I run pulseaudio -vv I can see this line:
Device hw:0,3 doesn't support 6 channels, changed to 2

Hmm, but I am not sure where to look after that...

Same results with:
speaker-test -twav -c6 
speaker-test -twav -c6 -Dplug:hdmi

only stereo

Last edited by gee (2010-08-29 22:24:25)

gee

Member

Registered: 2006-11-29

Posts: 313

Re: 5.1, passthrough and concurrent utilisation on the sound system

OK I switched today to pulse since it was easier this way to use both my soundcard and my hdmi, but I am still unable to get a 5.1 system through the hdmi.

Now that I don't configure much since pulse is taking over I'm not even sure where to look at

gee

Member

Registered: 2006-11-29

Posts: 313

Re: 5.1, passthrough and concurrent utilisation on the sound system

I have read a lot about this issue, and now my only hope seems to lie in the various options we can give in the modprobe conf file, but I cannot find anything for an HDMI connection coming from a radeon card (with radeon driver), and trying all these model options (and the rest) is kind of ouch.

Interestingly if I use pulse audio, I get kind of a 3.0 setup, in the sense that the center channel will be used for what it should do in speaker-test, but the 2 other front channels will also be used... Even then the receiver still sees stereo (weird?).