ALSA and Surround40 driving me mad
 

PC config:

.asound empty
KDE 4.23, slackware 64 current (alsa 1.018)
4x speakers (front/rear)

aplay -L =

default:CARD=NVidia
HDA NVidia, ALC883 Analog
Default Audio Device
front:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC883 Analog
Front speakers
surround40:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC883 Analog
4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC883 Analog
4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC883 Analog
5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC883 Analog
5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC883 Analog
7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
null
Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)


aplay -l =

card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC883 Analog [ALC883 Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: ALC883 Digital [ALC883 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0


Currently:

Anything played through alsa "default" will be stereo and duplicated to the rear speakers. This is great for Amarok. This is stock config untouched.

Required:

5.1 through Kaffiene should be downmixed to 4.0 and sent out. At the moment I hear left and right duplicated to rear.

So where am I at with Phonon-xine.xine.conf.?...

• Speaker mode to Surround 5.1,output to plughw:0,0 = kaffeine plays 5.1 sources so I can't hear centre or LFE in my current speaker config, amorak plays nothing not even stereo.
• Speaker mode to Surround 4.0, output to plug:surround40:0, no programs work, all give up after 3 secs.

So surround40 and surround51 plugs don't seem to be working in ALSA.

I then tried:

>> speaker-test -c4 -Dsurround40
== Playback open error: -16,Device or resource busy

All i want is 5.1 downmixed to 4.0 and stereo duplicated to 4.0

HOW HARD CAN IT BE?

freenode:#xine, #alsa, #phonon = nobody has a clue
alsa documentation on surround40 is CRAP.

:confused:

Are your sound modules built as modules, or compiled static?

If they're modules, there *might* be some help:

First, try running `alsaconf` from a root console. If it detects your sound device, then it should update your .asound and .anames files.

Second, please post the output of `cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#0`

And third, what sort of plug stack is on the back of your motherboard? The place where the speaker jacks is-- is it a six-stack (two rows of 3 plugs) or a three-stack (one row of three plugs) etc.. Please post that.

Fourth: post the output of `modinfo -p snd_hda_intel` (assuming your sound driver IS modules. If it's built in, this won't work, but for the fine-tuning I may suggest, you do need the sound drivers in modular format.)

If you're still having trouble, and you post the above info, I'll try to help.

Cheers,

Sasha