Getting 5.1 sound to work

[hellmet]

I've a nVidia MCP61 5.1 integrated sound card with a Logitech 5.1 speaker system.
I'm not able to get surround sound on either Movie Player or Amarok. I even tested using 5.1 sample files from the internet.
Works wonderfully on Windows, so you know there is no problem with my sound card or speaker system.
Any help on this?
Thanks in advance!

[ThinkDave]

Probably not gonna be helpful but have run "alsamixer" and checked that all the surround channels aren't muted or volume turned down. It did that to me when I first installed gutsy took me a while to figure out what was happening.

[irshadcharm]

please help people waiting for a proper fix for 5.1 surround in hardy....almost exhausted searching for 2 days regarding this issue...none is working...

[DkkD]

Have you edited your /etc/pulse/daemon.conf file?

If you haven't, enter this in your terminal:

sudo nano /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

Find and uncomment line:
default-sample-channels
and change value from 2 to the number of speakers you have.

[egroeg85]

This solution sort of worked for me. I got 6 channels, all working. I used it that way for a few days. Then I decided to try Pulse Audio's network streaming so I could play music over my 5.1 desktop speakers from my laptop. I set it up and it works for something like one song, then I get the "Connection refused" error on my desktop. Sound still works locally but I can't use the Pulse utilities and network streaming stops. I can't get it to reconnect so I have to log out and log back in again, then it repeats.

If I comment out the "default-sample-channels = 6" line in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf then it works just fine, only I am back to two channels. If I run grep pulse /var/log/* I get this error message:

/var/log/user.log:Apr 29 16:01:56 george pulseaudio[8997]: alsa-util.c: Device hw:0 doesn't support 6 channels, changed to 2.

Here I was hoping pulse audio would rid me of my alsa woes, but alas, it seems I will never be rid of this plague.

Does anyone have any idea of how to fix this? I tried making an .asoundrc file but it made no difference. Even with pulse set to two channels, "speaker-test -c 6" gets me sound out of all 6. Even if alsa thinks I only have 2 channels, it's playing out of all 6 of them.

[chris_x1]

hi guys, this may help but read the WHOLE post first!
if you have a 5.1 system, try this code

 ###  in your /etc/asound.conf file (create one)  
pcm.!default{
type plug
slave {
pcm surround51
channels 6
}
ttable{
0.0 1    # front left
1.1 1    # front right
0.2 1    # rear left
1.3 1     #rear right
0.4 0.5  # centre 
1.4 0.5  # centre 
0.5 0.5  # sub
1.5 0.5  # sub    		
}
   }

then make sure you have all the analogue or digital channels unmuted
i could not get 5.1 working properly in "hardy" yet. i got as far as

uncommenting this line in /etc/pulse/default.pa 
load-module module-alsa-sink

which worked with the asound.conf file but the sound went all erratic.
i just uninstalled everything pulse related in synaptic (search "pulse") and now sound is only handled by alsa, like in "gutsy" where i learned to do all this successfully
look here
http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/25
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...io/+bug/109439
maybe there is a way to use pulse properly but i will sort that one later i guess
i would recommend non-experts who are happy with their current ubuntu, not to automatically upgrade to a new release until you have fully tested (from another partition) i have it on a separate HD still (working fine) and haven't rushed into replacing gutsy yet. For the new features that are there its not worth inconveniencing yourself with any issues for hours on end, just use it as your own personal "testing" system until you are sure.

[egroeg85]

Well, none of this seems to help here. I just don't understand why I can set pulse to 6 channels and it works fine as long as I have networking turned off. But then when I turn on networking it disconnects after a few seconds. Why should the networking make the difference? The alsa error message doesn't seem to be the thing that kills it, but when I comment out that line in daemon.conf it both works and I don't get the error, so I assumed correlation.

[hellmet]

Btw, what the heck is pulseaudio ?
I didn't see it in the previous releases.. and now everybody is talking about it..

[egroeg85]

It's the new audio thing (technical term) that comes installed in Hardy. It has some cool features, like controlling the volume of individual programs. For the most part it makes no difference to the average user, unless you really want to use the extra features. I'm sure there are some more important differences but I'm not that smart. One thing it can do that I'm trying to set up is play from one computer (my laptop) through the speakers of another (my desktop). It's nice because my desktop has 5.1 surround speakers. Now if only I could get all the channels working right...

[hellmet]

Hehe.. thanks for clarifying.
So, pulse allows you to play thru speakers of another system, but doesn't play all 5 speakers on the current system. Thats pathetic!!