[alsa-devel] Surround sound not working on ALC887 based motherboard

[Raymond Yau]

> >         I have a Asus P5G41T-M LX Plus motherboard which is ICH7 +
> >         Realtek
> >         ALC887-VD, alsa only lets me access the first 2 channels
> >         (stereo), but
> >         not the 6 other ones. It works fine in Windows.
> >
> >         Trying to run this after killing pulseaudio fails:
> >
> >         $ aplay -D surround40:0 -f S16_LE -r 44100 -c 4 /dev/zero -v
> >         Playing raw data '/dev/zero' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian,
> >         Rate 44100 Hz, Channels 4
> >         aplay: set_params:1239: Channels count non available
> >
> >
> >         Output from alsa-info:
> >
http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=fe378d28f0dbb5a427b005d20866a762fd37d31a
>
> > you have to change channel mode from 2ch to 6ch to retask the input
> > jacks as output if your motherboard only have three audio jacks at
> > rear panel

> > Simple mixer control 'Channel Mode',0
> >   Capabilities: enum
> >   Items: '2ch' '4ch' '6ch'
> >   Item0: '2ch'
>
> How would one do that ? Pulseaudio only offers Stereo profiles.


amixer -c0 set "Channel  Mode" "6ch"

you can logout and login after you set the channel mode to 6ch so that
pulseaudio is restarted.

this also require

alsactl store this setting before computer shutdown

alsactl restore this setting after computer boot


> >
> > post output of pactl list or pulseaudio verbose log
>
> http://www.ocrete.ca/surround/pactl-list.txt
> http://www.ocrete.ca/surround/pulseaudio-vv.txt
>
>
> > do you mean pulseaudio cannot probe the surroun40 or surround51
> > profile ?
>
> Yes, but I can't use it with aplay even without pulseaudio running.
>


try speaker-test -c 6 -t wav -Dhw:0,0 after you set the channel mode to 6ch