HOWTO: Surround sound in pulseaudio

[raashell]

Hey Sammydee, thanks for the interest. There is no other sound card in my computer-- just built in surround sound on the motherboard. And your original solution worked great until I tried to alter what gnome-volume-control was controlling. All the speakers are still plugged in tight and I haven't seen any surround sound switch in the volume control, sound preferences, or anywhere else. Also, ESD is checked in my sound preferences.

lspci:

00:00.0 Memory controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Memory Controller (rev a3)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 ISA Bridge (rev f3)
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)
00:06.0 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 f2)
00:0a.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 Ethernet Controller (rev f3)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev f3)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev f3)
00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev f3)
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
01:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev c0)
05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600 GT (rev a1)

alsamixer -c 0 gets, "wrong 'c' argument."

alsmixer -c 1 gets:



Here is my paman modules...



and sinks..

[sammydee]

I was wondering for a while why the sound card wasn't showing up in lspci, then I saw your alsamixer - it looks like it's a usb sound card, can you post the output of lsusb please?

Try going into system/preferences/sound and make sure all the different types of sound are using pulseaudio, not alsa or anything else.

Sam

[raashell]

My lsusb is:

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0d8c:0201 C-Media Electronics, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 045e:0063 Microsoft Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Volume preferences lists: autodetect, usb audio, alsa, oss, and pulseaudio sound server. I had everything on autodetect, but switched it to pulseaudio with no noticeable difference.

It's weird that I get surround out of the front two speakers, but not the rear ones. I had considered removing and reinstalling alsa also, but I was worried about losing other programs by removing it.

[sammydee]

Do you currently have a ~/.asoundrc?

I'm struggling a bit to understand what is happening here. I think pulseaudio succesfully opened the card as a 5.1 surround sound card, and you can see here:

I: resampler.c: Forcing resampler 'copy', because of fixed, identical sample rates.
D: resampler.c: Channel matrix:
D: resampler.c: I00 I01
D: resampler.c: +------------
D: resampler.c: O00 | 1.000 0.000
D: resampler.c: O01 | 0.000 1.000
D: resampler.c: O02 | 1.000 0.000
D: resampler.c: O03 | 0.000 1.000
D: resampler.c: O04 | 0.500 0.500
D: resampler.c: O05 | 0.500 0.500
I: resampler.c: Using resampler 'copy'

That it thinks it is outputting to six channels. But you only get sound out of four? What happens if while you are playing music, you execute the command: "pavumeter". How many channels does it show?

Sam

[raashell]

I do have an .asoundrc that is automatically generated, and I think, points to another file. Here they are:

.asoundrc:

# ALSA library configuration file

# Include settings that are under the control of asoundconf(1).
# (To disable these settings, comment out this line.)
</home/john/.asoundrc.asoundconf>

.asoundrc.asoundconf:

# ALSA library configuration file managed by asoundconf(1).
#
# MANUAL CHANGES TO THIS FILE WILL BE OVERWRITTEN!
#
# Manual changes to the ALSA library configuration should be implemented
# by editing the ~/.asoundrc file, not by editing this file.
!defaults.pcm.card default
defaults.ctl.card default
defaults.pcm.device 0
defaults.pcm.subdevice -1
defaults.pcm.nonblock 1
defaults.pcm.ipc_key 5678293
defaults.pcm.ipc_gid audio
defaults.pcm.ipc_perm 0660
defaults.pcm.dmix.max_periods 0
defaults.pcm.dmix.rate 48000
defaults.pcm.dmix.format S16_LE
defaults.pcm.dmix.card defaults.pcm.card
defaults.pcm.dmix.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.dsnoop.card defaults.pcm.card
defaults.pcm.dsnoop.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.front.card defaults.pcm.card
defaults.pcm.front.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.rear.card defaults.pcm.card
defaults.pcm.rear.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.center_lfe.card defaults.pcm.card
defaults.pcm.center_lfe.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.side.card defaults.pcm.card
defaults.pcm.side.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.surround40.card defaults.pcm.card
defaults.pcm.surround40.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.surround41.card defaults.pcm.card
defaults.pcm.surround41.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.surround50.card defaults.pcm.card
defaults.pcm.surround50.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.surround51.card defaults.pcm.card
defaults.pcm.surround51.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.surround71.card defaults.pcm.card
defaults.pcm.surround71.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.iec958.card defaults.pcm.card
defaults.pcm.iec958.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.modem.card defaults.pcm.card
defaults.pcm.modem.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.rawmidi.card 0
defaults.rawmidi.device 0
defaults.rawmidi.subdevice -1
defaults.hwdep.card 0
defaults.hwdep.device 0
defaults.timer.class 2
defaults.timer.sclass 0
defaults.timer.card 0
defaults.timer.device 0
defaults.timer.subdevice 0
defaults.namehint.showall off
defaults.namehint.basic on
defaults.namehint.extended off
pcm.!default { type pulse }
ctl.!default { type pulse }

Here is a shot of pavumeter with music playing:

[sammydee]

Well pulseaudio certainly thinks it has six channels open and all are working just fine...

Try renaming your .asoundrc to .asoundrc.bak, so that it won't be loaded at all (you really shouldn't need one) and restart ubuntu.

Sam

[raashell]

Yeah, no dice. I have zero understanding of how pulse and alsa work together if, at all, and how gnome-volume-control might affect it. It seems bizarre, but I might be forced to do a fresh install of hardy just to get my sound back.

When I do speaker-test I get some error messages, but I don't know if it's supposed to work with pulse anyways...

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 1 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:3985:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2145:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
Playback open error: -2,No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'

[ralyon]

I've spent the last 5 hours searching and changing settings in my .pulse folder as well as .asoundrc and I keep getting the same error in pulseaudio when it doesn't fail all together:

...
W: alsa-util.c: Device hw:0,1 doesn't support 6 channels, changed to 2.
...

aplay -l gives me

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: AD198x Digital [AD198x Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

In my default.pa I have "load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,1" which enables the optical output and I have tried adding "channels=6 channel_map=front-left,front-right,front-center,rear-left,rear-right,lfe" to that with no change. I have also tried ...hw:0, ...hw:1, device_id=0, ...id=1, ...id=0,1 and ...alsa_output.pci_10de_371_sound_card_0_alsa_play back_1.

I also have "default-sample-rate = 48000" and "default-sample-channels = 6" in my daemon.conf file and the analog is showing 6 channels although I don't have anything attached to them.

I am using the Logitech Z-5500 Digital speakers connected with an optical cable and I can get the 5.1 working with ALSA DTS passthrough in Mythtv so I know the speakers and cables are set correctly, I just can't get pulseaudio to see its capability.

Can anyone please help me with getting pulseaudio to see all 6 channels? Thanks in advance.

ralyon

[sammydee]

Hi Ralyon

DTS passthrough is a funny thing, it uses a normal two channel digital audio connection to send compressed 6 channel sound.

The digital connection is two channel ONLY and will only ever work with 6 channels with DTS passthrough. The only way to make surround sound work without DTS passthroguh is if pulseaudio dynamically encoded the surround sound into DTS on the fly. I'm pretty sure pulseaudio doesn't support DTS passthrough at all at this time, so you may not be able to get pulseaudio to see six channels at all for now.

I will check up on this, I could be wrong.

Sam

EDIT: DOH I am so stupid!

Here is the fix: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=714712

[PRGUY85]

I can't get any sound after following the link you provided: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=714712.

I think the "make" command didn't do what its supposed to do:

make
make  all-recursive
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15'
Making all in oss
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/oss'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/oss'
Making all in mix
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/mix'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/mix'
Making all in pph
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/pph'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/pph'
Making all in pulse
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/pulse'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/pulse'
Making all in rate
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/rate'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/rate'
Making all in a52
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/a52'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/a52'
Making all in rate-lavc
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/rate-lavc'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/rate-lavc'
Making all in maemo
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/maemo'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/maemo'
Making all in doc
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/doc'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15/doc'
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/manolo/alsa-plugins-1.0.15'

I've got an onboard snd-hda-intel sound on my Gygabyte GA-P35-DS3L with Logitech 5.1 speakers connected through ANALOG jacks. I could get sound out of all speakers before but not true surround sound, just same sound through all speakers, example: voice on movies came out of rear speakers all the time.