5.1 sound through optical toslink cable

[adix87]

Hi, i installed ubuntu 9.04 last week to my PC that is connected to my hometheatre system with 5.1 sound and a projector.

Everything worked really nice, even HDmovies played really good except for the 5.1 sound, actually i didn't get any sound through the optical cable. In windows this worked out of the box and i really REALLY need the sound when watching movies.. I tried with a pair of headphones and i did get sound out of the aux in my soundcard, but there is no sound from optical.

My soundcard is Auzentech xplosion 7.1 and all it has to do is let the sound through to my 5.1 amplifier.

I tried to find solutions on this forum and google, but i wansn't really successful, i found a way to get the 5.1 sound on audigy 2 but does it work on my card too? And i found something called open sound system and ALSA drivers but i had no idea how to install them, actually they are installed on my system already because when i go to sound options in ubuntu i can see my soundcard and (OSS) and (ALSA) after the name..


I've used ubuntu before, but im still really new to linux-enviroment.

I really hope someone has a solution for this, its stupid that i have to use windows only because the sound won't work in linux.

[KyleRaynor]

Ok, first a few stupid questions.
1. How are you connecting the toslink to the sound card?(ie, is it straight to the back of the card, or is it to a console in a front cd drive slot, etc)
2. Do you have a set of headphones/speakers handy to try on the analog output to see if the sound card works at all?

[adix87]

This is so wierd.. The moment i ask for help, is when i get it to work. This happens now and then when i go to the doctor, but the moment the doctor takes a look at mee i don't feel sick at all.. Well anyway.
I found a topic that said i had to enable IEC958 Output in volume control. So i did it and now the sound works
I tried this before but the reason it didn't work back then was because i enabled all the switches, i should have only enabled IEC958 Output not all the IEC958 things.

If anyone else has this problem, use ALSA mixer and ALSA drivers from System -> Preferences -> Sound and then go to volume control and enable all the things in properties, then go to switches tab and enable IEC958 Output.