[SOLVED] 5.1 surround not working properly (Slackware 13.37)

Bindestreck · 07-10-2011, 03:20 PM

Hi,

i have problem to get my 5.1 surround sound card to work properly on Slackware 13.37 with example the Mplayer, Spotify or even when watching movie-clips at youtubes. I have searched through forum but havent find any solutions to this problem.

I have tested my sound card and it seems to work properly when executing "speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -t wav" in the terminal. I have saved the ALSA settings through "alsactl store". But like i said, it still doesnt work with explicitly programs like Mplayer or Spotify, it still plays the sound as 2.1 (stereo).

My soundcard is recognized as ICH5, lspci gives this:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82875P/E7210 Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82875P Processor to AGP Controller (rev 02)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82875P/E7210 Processor to PCI to CSA Bridge (rev 02)
00:06.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82875P/E7210 Processor to I/O Memory Interface (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB (ICH5) SATA Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV730 Pro AGP [Radeon HD 4600 Series]
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RV710/730
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82547EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
03:02.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
03:03.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)

Can i force 5.1 surround somehow by using .asoundrc?

/eXpander

Jack128 · 07-11-2011, 01:42 AM

Hello eXpander,
this behavior is normal, because your music/etc is got just
stereo informations. You need to mix this stereo up to surround.

With "aplay -L" you can see all PCMs on your sound card.

I don't know if this is working for you, but its working for me.
(My 5.1 surround sound system, mixes stereo to surround auto)

But you could try: ~/.asound

Code:

pcm.swap51 {
	type dmix
	ipc_key 1024
	slave {
		pcm "hw:0,0"
		rate 48000
		channels 6
		period_time 0
		period_size 1024
		buffer_time 0
		buffer_size 8192
	} 


}

pcm.!default {
	type plug
	slave.pcm "swap51"

	slave.channels 6
	route_policy duplicate
}

Regards, Jack.
Cheers

Bindestreck · 07-11-2011, 04:32 AM

Hello, thanks for your reply. The whole code above did not work, however using only this works:

Code:

pcm.!default {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "surround51"
    slave.channels 6
    route_policy duplicate
}

But of course, the sound does now crackle when playing youtube-movies, i.e. a constant crackling. Spotify doesnt even work anymore (winecfg use ALSA as sound drive so it should not be any problem).

My aplay -l gives this:

bash-4.1$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: ICH5 [Intel ICH5], device 0: Intel ICH [Intel ICH5]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: ICH5 [Intel ICH5], device 4: Intel ICH - IEC958 [Intel ICH5 - IEC958]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Is there something i need to put in the /etc/asound.conf to fix this crackling sound?

/eXpander

*EDIT: Spotify does now work by changing "Hardware acceleration" to "emulation" in winecfg. But i still got the sound crackling problem.

Bindestreck · 07-11-2011, 05:42 AM

Ok, i managed to solve the problem by changing the contents in asound.conf. The /etc/asound.conf looks like this:

Code:

pcm.!dmix {
   type dmix
   ipc_key 1024
   slave {
       pcm "hw:0,0"
       channels 6

   }
}
pcm.!default {
   type plug
   slave.pcm "dmix"
   slave.channels 6
   route_policy duplicate
}

Now it works perfect!

/eXpander

*EDIT: I changed back "Hardware acceleration" to "Full" in winecfg, and Spotify still sound clearly and good.