Yet another 5.1 Surround Sound Thread!!

[notageek]

Hello Guys,

I have....

1. Creative SoundBlaster Live 5.1 connected to Creative T6060 5.1 Speakers.
2. Drivers for the sound card loaded and working.
3. Searched this forum for a solution, none -found (although found a lot of threads with 0 replies).
4. Searched google, tried them out no go.
5. Working 5.1 only while playing DVDs.
6. Removed PulseAudio ages ago.
7. Fedora 8 (2.6.24.4-64.fc8)
8. Tried editing .asoundrc file without success.

I would like to get 5.1 channel sound working all the time (even when playing mp3)

Any help/pointers/recommendation will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for reading this post.

[stevea]

My experience is that setting the 5.1 is based on the application.
Xine has sound settings for 5.1
MPlayer too.
I use amarok w/ the xine engine and you can set that for 5.1 too.

[notageek]

I use amarok w/ the xine engine and you can set that for 5.1 too.

This is my set up too (I mean 5.1 channel is set up in Amarok) but the output is still 2.1

I was searching for a solution, and found a lot of links which basically (with different permutation/combination) tells me to try this...

http://www.halfgaar.net/surround-sound-in-linux (basically to edit asound.conf or .asounrc, and add some voodoo script)

Now, mp3 (or music/audio CD) is essentially 2.1 and I can play 5.1 only with DVDs (because they are 5.1), however when I play mp3 (and audio CDs) on another OS (not of *nix lineage) it plays from all the speakers.

So I was wondering how to get this working.

I'm getting a lot of Linux down time primarilly because of this ;)

[notageek]

Well that link tells you how to downgrade, but almost evry solutions involves something similar none of which work.

I'm guessing the solution I'm looking for has to be something Fedora specific.

[daneel971]

There are instruction in the alsa wiki for routing 2.0 to 5.1 - I use a similar setup for an Audigy and a couple of integrated chips and it works fine. Right now I don't have here my .asoundrc, but I will post it later.

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/Playing_stereo_on_surround_sound_setup_%28Howto%29

after fixing your .asoundrc, remember to properly set up xine/amarok/mplayer.

[stevea]

I'm no audio geek. The kernel architecture for sound is complex and beyond my interest, but i don't understand why you can't get 5.1 working.

On Amarok "Settings->Configure Amarok" Engine:
I show "xne engine""Autodetect" and "Surround 5.1.

When running there is a large list of plugins to amarok, many from xine) and the ones from the Livna ...
xine-lib-extras-nonfree package seem critical for 5.1 in my case.

You're apparently past this, but a nice test for 5.1
http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/SoundcardTesting
If that doesn't work look to your drivers&hardware.

[daneel971]

...but i don't understand why you can't get 5.1 working.
notageek's issue isn't about obtaining 5.1 surround sound, but playing a stereo (2 channel) sound through all the speakers of a 5.1 speaker system: this involves routing/duplicating the front L/R channels to the rear L/R channnels, to the subwoofer and to the center channel.
You need to set up an alsa plugin, using the ttable trick or the duplicate policy method.
Then you instruct amarok/xine/mplayer to use this plugin as default alsa device, using the surround51 device for real multichannel audio.

[brebs]

Here ya go - use this ~/.asoundrc (http://pastebin.com/f6ed76162)

Output to upmix_20to51_resample in e.g. audacious.

Needs ladspa installed. It resamples to 48k, upmixes stereo to 5.1, and filters the bass to just the subwoofer. Sounds great with an Audigy 4 :)

[notageek]

There are instruction in the alsa wiki for routing 2.0 to 5.1 - I use a similar setup for an Audigy and a couple of integrated chips and it works fine. Right now I don't have here my .asoundrc, but I will post it later.

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/P...tup_%28Howto%29

after fixing your .asoundrc, remember to properly set up xine/amarok/mplayer.
Yup got it working!!!

Thanks a lot daneel971.

@brebs : I've bookmarked your link, seems like solution to all audio issues. Thanks man!!

@stevea: Thank you too ;)

A few things that might be fedora specific is that /etc/asound.conf exists, so editing .asoundrc doesn't quiet help.

Also there's a /etc/asound.names there, which contained some entries from the integrated sound card (I recently upgraded sound card)

And another specific that I tried was change "Rear Jack" Option (screenshot attached)


I can now feel my room shaking!! :D

[brebs]

/etc/asound.conf exists
So? ~/.asoundrc should overrule it.

[notageek]

So? ~/.asoundrc should overrule it.

Oh ok, since I was trying a lot of these scripts from the Net and none of them worked I theorized that prolly /etc/asound.conf is overriding the config.

But it all works now!! Yeaayee!!!

Got it working on Debian and Slackware too!!