LinuxQuestions.org - 5.1 Surround sound in SuSE Linux 9.0

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5.1 Surround sound in SuSE Linux 9.0

It's been a few days and I was just starting to get comfortable with my Linux system...

I was just starting to come to terms with inability to play DVD's on Linux... when I discovered that I couldn't get my 5.1 surround sound working. Really, truly, if there were anything that might persuade me to go back to Windows, it would be the knowledge that both DVD's AND surround sound were not possible.

I've got Avance AC'97 inbuilt sound- with holes at the back for front speaker set, rear speaker set, and centre/subwoofer speaker set.

Currently, only the front set plays sounds, music etc. By going into ALSA MixerGUI and activating the "duplicate front" sliders, I can produce the same sounds from my rear set (though I would argue that this is not truly surround sound). However I can't get a peep out of centre speaker or sub; and to be honest, duplicating front output at the rear is far from true surround sound.

Apparently my computer is using the Intel 8x0 driver. Can anyone help out here before I go insane and do something stupid like revert back to WinXP? Help!:cry:

I am using the spdif built in to my board and your same driver. I can't get it to work except when using XMMS player. I would like to have it work for all sounds, events, games, etc. But no. And out of all the ports for audio in the back only the front speaker out works, similar to your issue.

I am still looking for an answer to this quesiton:

Am I only going to get sould out of my spdif with using XMMS or watching a movie? I would like to get the system sounds and Tgames, beeps, buzzes, etc. ALL sounds out of the spdif. Is this possible?

Thanks,

Bobby

Anyone got any ideas on this one?

Well.... I hate to admit it, but I gave up. I installed my SB Audigy back in and the digital out works very well now. I got the mono mini plug to rca and plugged that into my coaxial digital in and no probs. Alsamixer had the digital out muted by default but that was expected. I now have 5.1 sound all the time in both desktop and games..... now to get speech working in ut2004.

I wish u luck getting the onboard spdif port working and if you do pleasee drop us a line here.

This doesn't look good. Lack of DVD and surround sound is causing me to appreciate Windows in a whole new way :(

Well, I was actually able to get the surround sound working using XMMS for mp3's and Xine for my dvds. However, that's the ONLY time it would work. Seems that the nfroce/alsa drivers are not up to speed yet but the emu10k1 or whatever its called for the sound blaster stuff hasn't givin me any issues yet.

Try this config in ~/.asoundrc

Use sound51 device as alsa device in xmms, bmp or another music player, where you want to use 5.1 sound. I've kept 2.0 default setting for system beeps like irc, icq etc, because I don't want them to be 5.1. If you want ALL sounds be 5.1 just unconmment first slave.pcm in !default and comment the second.

Code:

pcm.!default {

    type plug

    #slave.pcm "sound51"

    slave.pcm "dmix"

}



pcm.dmixs51 {

        type dmix

        ipc_key 1024

        slave {

                pcm "hw:0,1"

                rate 48000

                channels 6

                period_time 0

                period_size 1024

                buffer_time 0

                buffer_size 4096

        }

}



pcm.s51 {

  type plug

  slave.pcm "dmixs51"

}



pcm.dsp0 {

  type plug

  slave.pcm "dmixs51"

}



pcm.sound51 {

    type route

    slave.pcm s51

    slave.channels 6

    ttable.0.0 1

    ttable.1.1 1

    ttable.0.2 1

    ttable.1.3 1

    ttable.0.4 0.5

    ttable.1.4 0.5

    ttable.0.5 0.5

    ttable.1.5 0.5

}

Regardigs dvd's I dont know, but 5.1 ac3-s in divX moves works well in mplayer with

Code:

channels = 6

line in /etc/mplayer.conf

P.S. Sorry for my english ...

Thanks for the advice LordInquisitor - it's been over a year and I'm now on SuSE 9.3 and STILL can't get the thing working.

I checked my home directory (/home/me) and my root directory (/root) and found no file called .asoundrc - so I copied the code you wrote above and saved it as a new file called .asoundrc in both directories. I restarted my machine but although there are no errors displayed, there is now no sound at all.

Any idea why it might not be working? :S

At first start "alsamixer" in console and see are required channels are muted. If so - unmute them.

If all is correct, find any WAV file and try playing it using different alsa devices.

aplay -D default a.wav
aplay -D hw:0,0 a.wav
aplay -D hw:0,1 a.wav
aplay -D surround51 a.wav
aplay -D s51 a.wav

If there will be any errors - post them here.

Its better to change

Code:

    type route

    slave.pcm s51

    slave.channels 6

    ttable.0.0 1

    ttable.1.1 1

    ttable.0.2 1

    ttable.1.3 1

    ttable.0.4 0.5

    ttable.1.4 0.5

    ttable.0.5 0.5

    ttable.1.5 0.5

Code:

    type route

    slave.pcm s51

    slave.channels 6

    ttable.0.0 0.9

    ttable.1.1 0.9

    ttable.0.2 0.75

    ttable.1.3 0.75

    ttable.0.4 0.5

    ttable.1.4 0.5

    ttable.0.5 0.5

    ttable.1.5 0.5

This way you can hear all five channels seperately instead all channels comming at you at the same level. The subwoofer channel have to be filtered by an active low-pass filter because using ladpa filters will not work for just one channel. Its better to have just two channels playing for the best sound quality. Surround sound screws up sound quality by canceling out frequencies. About 98% of people positions rear speaker incorrectly. Their are three types of rear speakers. They are directional, dipole, and bipole. The directional speakers should be pointed away from the listening area, but they should be pointed at an diffused material. Bipole speakers should be placed on the back wall. Dipole speakers should placed on the side wall.

You are really spoiled if you need surround sound for everything.

^ I confess to being spoilt :D

I removed the .asoundrc file I made from /home/me but left it in /root and rebooted; sound came back. I checked alsamixer and all the necessary channels seemed to work. Running the commands you suggested produced the following results:

aplay -D default a.wav = WORKS

aplay -D hw:0,0 a.wav

Code:

Playing WAVE 'a.wav' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 11025 Hz, Mono

aplay: set_params:882: Sample format non available

aplay -D hw:0,1 a.wav

Code:

aplay: main:533: audio open error: Permission denied

aplay -D surround51 a.wav

Code:

Playing WAVE 'a.wav' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 11025 Hz, Mono

aplay: set_params:882: Sample format non available

aplay -D s51 a.wav

Code:

ALSA lib pcm.c:2090:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM s51

aplay: main:533: audio open error: No such file or directory

Seeing the error about permissions made me wonder whether I should run as root; all tests produced the same result as root except:

aplay -D s51 thinkwhite.wav
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:802:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
aplay: main:533: audio open error: Permission denied

I'm going to try restoring the .asoundrc file to my /home/me directory and run again to see if it makes a difference.

Anyone who manages to solve this cunning mystery has a standing round of beer for me if they're ever in England :D

At first - you don't need to reboot, when you make changes to ~/.asoundrc or /etc/asound.conf (THIS IS NOT A WINDOWS). You don't need even to restart alsa.

Maybe you need to add your user to group "audio":

gpasswd -a <user> audio

(I don't know how it is in SuSE, but in Gentoo it is required)

Check permissions to
/dev/dsp
/dev/adsp
/dev/audio
/dev/mixer

And to all devices in /dev/snd (Try adding "options snd device_mode=0666" to /etc/modules.conf)

What output gives "aplay -L" command?

I made sure I was added to audio and that I had permissions to the four audio devices you specified, as well as /dev/snd. Oddly enough, there was no /etc/modules.conf file, and a search of the filesystem did not reveal any file named that anywhere on the computer.

Since restoring the .asoundrc file, two of the results for the five tests above have changed to:

aplay -D default a.wav
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:802:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
aplay: main:533: audio open error: Permission denied

aplay -D s51 a.wav
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:802:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
aplay: main:533: audio open error: Permission denied

I also did aplay -L and got the following:

Code:

PCM list:

hw {

        @args.0 CARD

        @args.1 DEV

        @args.2 SUBDEV

        @args.CARD {

                type string

                default {

                        @func getenv

                        vars {

                                0 ALSA_PCM_CARD

                                1 ALSA_CARD

                        }

                        default {

                                @func refer

                                name 'defaults.pcm.card'

                        }

                }

        }

        @args.DEV {

                type integer

                default {

                        @func igetenv

                        vars {

                                0 ALSA_PCM_DEVICE

                        }

                        default {

                                @func refer

                                name 'defaults.pcm.device'

                        }

                }

        }

        @args.SUBDEV {

                type integer

                default {

                        @func refer

                        name 'defaults.pcm.subdevice'

                }

        }

        type hw

        card $CARD

        device $DEV

        subdevice $SUBDEV

}

plughw {

        @args.0 CARD

        @args.1 DEV

        @args.2 SUBDEV

        @args.CARD {

                type string

                default {

                        @func getenv

                        vars {

                                0 ALSA_PCM_CARD

                                1 ALSA_CARD

                        }

                        default {

                                @func refer

                                name 'defaults.pcm.card'

                        }

                }

        }

        @args.DEV {

                type integer

                default {

                        @func igetenv

                        vars {

                                0 ALSA_PCM_DEVICE

                        }

                        default {

                                @func refer

                                name 'defaults.pcm.device'

                        }

                }

        }

        @args.SUBDEV {

                type integer

                default {

                        @func refer

                        name 'defaults.pcm.subdevice'

                }

        }

        type plug

        slave.pcm {

                type hw

                card $CARD

                device $DEV

                subdevice $SUBDEV

        }

}

plug {

        @args.0 SLAVE

        @args.SLAVE {

                type string

        }

        type plug

        slave.pcm $SLAVE

}

shm {

        @args.0 SOCKET

        @args.1 PCM

        @args.SOCKET {

                type string

        }

        @args.PCM {

                type string

        }

        type shm

        server $SOCKET

        pcm $PCM

}

tee {

        @args.0 SLAVE

        @args.1 FILE

        @args.2 FORMAT

        @args.SLAVE {

                type string

        }

        @args.FILE {

                type string

        }

        @args.FORMAT {

                type string

                default raw

        }

        type file

        slave.pcm $SLAVE

        file $FILE

        format $FORMAT

}

file {

        @args.0 FILE

        @args.1 FORMAT

        @args.FILE {

                type string

        }

        @args.FORMAT {

                type string

                default raw

        }

        type file

        slave.pcm null

        file $FILE

        format $FORMAT

}

null {

        type null

}

cards 'cards.pcm'

front 'cards.pcm.front'

rear 'cards.pcm.rear'

center_lfe 'cards.pcm.center_lfe'

side 'cards.pcm.side'

surround40 'cards.pcm.surround40'

surround41 'cards.pcm.surround41'

surround50 'cards.pcm.surround50'

surround51 'cards.pcm.surround51'

surround71 'cards.pcm.surround71'

iec958 'cards.pcm.iec958'

spdif 'cards.pcm.iec958'

modem 'cards.pcm.modem'

dmix 'cards.pcm.dmix'

dsnoop 'cards.pcm.dsnoop'

default {

        type plug

        slave.pcm sound51

}

dmixs51 {

        type dmix

        ipc_key 1024

        slave {

                pcm 'hw:0,1'

                rate 48000

                channels 6

                period_time 0

                period_size 1024

                buffer_time 0

                buffer_size 4096

        }

}

s51 {

        type plug

        slave.pcm dmixs51

}

dsp0 {

        type plug

        slave.pcm dmixs51

}

sound51 {

        type route

        slave.pcm s51

        slave.channels 6

        ttable.0.0 1

        ttable.0.2 1

        ttable.0.4 0.5

        ttable.0.5 0.5

        ttable.1.1 1

        ttable.1.3 1

        ttable.1.4 0.5

        ttable.1.5 0.5

}

Also, when I removed the .asoundrc file after doing these tests, sound did not come back on (should I restart?). I killed the artsd process but when I tried to run it again I got the following:

/opt/kde3/bin/artsd
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:802:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device: default can't be opened for playback (Permission denied)

Thanks for your help so far, very much appreciated :)

Getting DVDs to play

I hope this isn't an extra unnecessary answer, I did scan the post, but couldn't find a bit releveant to your dvd problem.

You may not have had success getting DVDs to play, because most distributions don't officially support them, unless you want to buy a commercial DVD player, because the technology involved is patented. (see nosoftwarepatents.com)

There are various programs, however, which will allow you to watch them, the legality is a little grey, but then, who has a licensed DVD player in windows anyway?

The thing you need most of all is libdvdcss, or equivalent. My reccommended way of doing this, though I must point out that you should thoroughly research the legal implications, is below. This method has been written from the point of view of a debian user, so may be different for SuSE.

Use apt-get to install 'ogle', and optionally the GUI version.
search through the documentation, under debian, I think the file is under /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3.
This folder should contain a file with instructions for how to install libdvdcss. Once this is installed, you should be able to play dvds in any program that supports dvds, though I usually use ogle or (g)mplayer.

You may also be able to get a commercial dvd app from SuSE, or certain other retailers.

Hope this is of help to you.

^ Thanks- I did eventually work out how to get DVDs working! Still, as much as my Linux proficiency has increased, no joy on the surround sround. Ta for the post though!

Any experts on 5.1 would be welcome...