2.1 audio on 5.1 speakers?

[dwheel]

I have a computer dedicated to playing music running Xubuntu, and it's connected to a Logitech 5.1 speaker system. Is there a way I can convince Rhythmbox (or perhaps another player) to play music across all 5 speakers? I was previously able to do this on a Windows box.

[aelfwyne]

I have a computer dedicated to playing music running Xubuntu, and it's connected to a Logitech 5.1 speaker system. Is there a way I can convince Rhythmbox (or perhaps another player) to play music across all 5 speakers? I was previously able to do this on a Windows box.

I'd like to know an answer to this as well, in the "other os", there were two different ways to map sound to my rear speakers from a stereo source - would be very nice to do the same here since almost nothing comes as 5.1 audio by default.

[Brebs]

Yes it's possible, with some setup (ftp://brebs.me.uk/linux/asoundrc).

[aelfwyne]

Some further research and I found instructions for doing this with PulseAudio:

I have a surround sound card, but PulseAudio uses just the front speakers! ¶

Many people have a surround card, but have speakers for just two channels, so PulseAudio can't really default to a surround setup. To enable all the channels, edit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf: uncomment the default-sample-channels line (i.e. remove the semicolon from the beginning of the line) and set the value to 6 if you have a 5.1 setup, or 8 if you have 7.1 setup etc. After doing the edit, restart pulseaudio.


Haven't tried it yet (pulseaudio won't let me restart it manually, gives errors and I don't want to reboot right now to test it)...

Hopefully it will work without having to get into the Also configuration.