7.1 channel audio not working on ASUS A8N E

[panzercool]

Guys,

I've been trying very hard to get 7.1 audio to work but it will just NOT work. Please help me out guys

Here are the outputs

lspci


00:00.0 Memory controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Memory Controller (rev a3)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 ISA Bridge (rev a3)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation CK804 SMBus (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a2)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a2)
00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 IDE (rev f2)
00:07.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev f3)
00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev f3)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 Ethernet Controller (rev a3)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV43 [GeForce 6600] (rev a2)

aplay -L


front:CARD=CK804,DEV=0
NVidia CK804, NVidia CK804
Front speakers
surround40:CARD=CK804,DEV=0
NVidia CK804, NVidia CK804
4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=CK804,DEV=0
NVidia CK804, NVidia CK804
4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=CK804,DEV=0
NVidia CK804, NVidia CK804
5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=CK804,DEV=0
NVidia CK804, NVidia CK804
5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
null
Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)


daemon.conf

; default-sample-format = s16le
; default-sample-rate = 44100
; default-sample-channels = 8

default-fragments = 8
default-fragment-size-msec = 5


At this moment I get sound from the front left, front right, center and woofer


Please help !!!

[markbuntu]

Are there any switches in the Volume Control from the panel. Right click on the Volume Control and click Open Volume Control and look in the Switches or Options section.

In many of these sound cards/chips some of the plugs do double duty as Line In/Side and Mic In/Rear or something like that. Also, if you are dual booting with windows, windows will configure your speakers automatically even though they are in the wrong plugs. Ubuntu will not do this so check the plugs.

[mindoms]

aplay -L does not reveal any 7.1 support.
Are you sure your hardware supports it?

How is your surround-system hooked to the soundcard?
optical or 4 Jacks? (do you have a reciever or an amplifier?)

what does the following?


speaker-test -c 6 -Dplug:surround51 -t wav
speaker-test -c 8 -Dplug:surround71 -t wav

please post any error-messages

...damnit. i just saw this:
daemon.conf should look like this
(everything on the right side of the semicolon (;) is a comment and will be ignored)




; default-sample-format = s16le
; default-sample-rate = 44100
default-sample-channels = 8

default-fragments = 8
default-fragment-size-msec = 5


I'm not sure about
default-fragments = 8
default-fragment-size-msec = 5

... why are they not commented out ?
If it is not on purpose, put a ; in the beginning of those 2 lines

[panzercool]

@ Markbuntu : There are no switches if I have the device set to "Playback: ALSA PCM on surround51.0 (Nvidia CK804) via DMA (Pulseaudio mixer). I do have have the switches & option when i set it to "Nvidia CK804 (Alsa Mixer). In the option tab I have "Surround Jack Mode : Independent" and "Channel Mode : 6ch" Here, I do not have 8 channel mode option


@minidoms : I have four jacks plugged into the woofer from the mobo.

In the "speaker-test -c 6 -Dplug:surround51 -t wav" front left, front center,front right and LFE pass and rear right and left fails the test

For the "speaker-test -c 8 -Dplug:surround71 -t wav" Test I get the following error
ALSA lib pcm.c:2144: (snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround71
Playback open error: -2,No such file or directory

[markbuntu]

It seems like the driver does not recognize 7.1 surround for your card. Let's see which driver it is using:

cat /proc/asound/modules

[panzercool]

Here the output for cat /proc/asound/modules
0 snd_intel8x0
1 snd_mpu401

true, A8N E is an AMD nforce4 ultra

[panzercool]

how do I make ubuntu recognize the right drivers ?

[markbuntu]

It seems that the driver for that card, which seems to be the correct one, does not recognize 7.1 surround. Due to the confusion surrounding the implementation of that chip by so many OEMs, there are options you can try that may or may not work.

To invoke an option, you would add a line like this to the file:

/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base"

options snd_intel8x0 ac97_quirk

There is a bunch of info on that and all other snd module in this file on your computer:

/user/share/doc/alsa-base/driver/ALSA-Configuration.tar.gz

Are you sure that 7.1 surround is even available with that mobo. Did they say it was?

You also have an mpu401 device, what is that?

[mindoms]

You also have an mpu401 device, what is that?

mpu401 is just the MIDI device, so no use for surround
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPU401

[PowerRanger]

Hello-- sorry in advance for the long post...

I've been messing with my a8n audio for days and I've learned a thing or two but not arrived at a solution yet. I'm not 100% convinced that 5 channel or more UNCOMPRESSED PCM can be passed over coax spdif, check this post to the also mailing list:
http://www.mail-archive.com/alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net/msg19755.html

The relevant portion being:
> S/PDIF supports either two PCM (uncompressed) channels or passthrough of
> lossily encoded multichannel (up to 8 channels can be used then afaik).
>
> speaker-test, as you tried to run it, is generating 6 PCM (uncompressed)
> streams, and as S/PDIF can only carry 2 PCM channels then you only near
> two of them out of your speakers.
>
> "Dolby Digital" and DTS are both lossy (some audio quality is lost to
> save filesize/bandwith) formats which Windows, and probably ALSA, can
> pass directly over the digital link to be decoded by your speakers' decoder.
>
> The things which *should* work for multichannel are:
> * Enabling digital passthrough and sending undecoded AC3/DTS straight to
> your reciever
> * Using 3 (analogue) stereo cables to connect your PC to your speakers,
> you'll then need to use the surroundXX family of devices. Probably
> surround51
>
> -ol
>
When I run 'speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -twav' with coax connected to my sony receiver, I can see when it sends a PCM signal because the front display tell me that it has a PCM lock. The speaker test will send PCM 'front left', then lose the PCM signal for while center test is saying 'center' then reaquire PCM lock for 'front right' then lose again for rear left and right and LFE/sub. With speaker test using spdif all I ever get is the two front channels.

I downloaded some test DTS and Dolby Digital encoded 'surround test' tracks from here:
http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/mall/index.asp?programid=2445
after extracting them to my home directory I play them with the commands 'aplay -D hw:0,0 /home/flip/SURROUNDTEST_DD_640.wav' for Dolby Digital or aplay -D hw:0,0 /home/flip/SURROUNDTEST_011212.wav for the DTS file. The DTS file will cause my receiver's multi-channel decoding light to light up and I get proper sound from all 5.1 channels. The DD will instead of signaling PCM will say 'Dolby Digital 3/2' and I get proper audio from all 5.1 channels.

I have not been able to get AC3 pass-through from VLC playing a DVD to work yet.

When I connect the analog surround Motherboard outputs to the 5.1 analog inputs of my receiver and run speaker-test again, I get everything except the 2 front channels. I've tried what seems like all combos of settings in alsamixer and the sound mixer applet including toggling the IEC958 switch and volume.

I can set VLC to output 5.1 and set the receiver to the analog inputs, I don't get the front channels either, but sub, center and rear are fine.

gstreamer things (like rhythymbox) cause the PCM mode to sync and I get sound from all channels. I don't understand this because this is using PCM over the coax spdif. If the quote I referenced above is true this shouldn't be possible. Isn't PCM by definition uncompressed?


FWIW I'm pretty sure all the Asus a8n series cards will do 8 channel, but I don't have a decoder or amp for that. Mine will do it if the mobo manual is correct.

From the previous poster concerning commenting lines in the daemon.conf, from what I read the commented lines indicate default values, if you change a value, remove the ';', so if you want your fragments settings to be honored leave the ';' off that entry as I'm pretty sure those are not the defaults. I think the fragments settings are more quality oriented, I don't think the fragments settings will stop audio from working. I could be wrong on that though.

If anybody has an idea for how to enable ac3 pass-through or how to get all of my channels working with speaker-test (analog or coax) I'm all ears (pun intended). The mobo and my receiver both have optical connections, but I don't have the cable and I suspect it will behave exactly as the coax does.