playing 5.1 audio using 1 sound card

[Adel Ahmed]

Is it possible to output surround sound using a laptop's sound card?
I want to use the 2 speakers on the TV connected via HDMI as front right and front left, the laptop speakers or a bluetooth speaker as the subwoofer and 2 speakers connected via 3.5 as the rear left and rear right, would something like this be possible? if not can i get this done by getting a usb sound card and attaching speakers to that sound card?
I'm open to using alsa, pulse or anything else that would get this done, low latency would be a great bonus though.

[Adel Ahmed]

I'm trying to do thsi using pulse audio:

[Adel Ahmed]

this appears to be what I want:

[szatox]

I think you should be able to route channels to different physical devices with alsa alone, by creating a virtual device (in alsa config file).
Haven't tried that though. Also, if you use different physical devices, their clocks might drift, in which case after a while your channels will no longer by synchronized.

AFAIR JACK is able to use several audio devices at the same time, natively. JACK2 can't. Just in case you wanted to try.
No idea about PA.

[NeddySeagoon]

Its not just clock drift, its latency well.
The different outputs have different latencies, they will need to be compensated for.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[psycho]

You don't need a USB sound card...you can already output all your surround channels through the HDMI connection you're using for the TV...what you really need is a proper AV receiver (if you're thinking of shelling out for a USB sound card you might as well get a cheap receiver instead...old second hand ones don't cost much), and ideally some proper speakers. If you want to hear excruciatingly bad surround (laptop speakers as a sub...that sounds unbearable!), sending the various channels to separate mismatched speakers is possible...and if you have a decent modern TV it's possible the front two channels won't sound too horrible...but if you can possibly afford to do it properly, do it properly.

I've done the kind of thing you're suggesting (I had a nice mini hifi stereo so used that for the front speakers, a dirt-cheap 2.1 PC speaker system for the sub and rear channels, and the TV speakers for the centre/dialogue channel), and I loved it and thought it was great...until I tried a proper receiver with decent speakers in the same space, and realised what a bone-jarringly hideous noise I'd been putting up with for so long. The subs aren't just for shaking the room when horses thunder past or whatever: they add depth and realism to everything from obvious stuff like big strings in orchestras through to stuff where you don't expect it to matter, like high-pitched electric guitar solos...everything just sounds better when a decent receiver's decoding the surround data properly, taking into account the positions and physical properties of the speakers. If you just want the extra channels for direction (e.g. if you're gaming and need to hear when something's behind you), OK, hacking something together with the available speakers can make sense, no matter how bad it sounds...but otherwise, just plugging a nice pair of stereo headphones into that 3.5 jack is probably going to sound much better than a Frankenstein's monster of TV+laptop+bluetooth speakers.

I don't have a copy of the .asoundrc I used for the hybrid setup, but from memory it was pretty complex, with a virtual device for each physical output, and then a default device that would route the appropriate channels to the various virtual sound cards. It can be done...but your HDMI output can already do the job much better, if you just plug it into the right hardware.