Surround with RealTek ALC850 (Stereo works, no surround)

[brettlpb]

My MSI nForce3 Ultra board uses the RealTek ALC850 (AC97) for sound, it has full 7.1 surround support.

I'm not sure if this is a problem specific to AMD64, but I'm running a full 64-bit installation, so I figured I'd post it here.

Basically, I have full working stereo, but the back and center speakers aren't "working".

Alsamixer has a Surround option, I unmuted and turned it up to 100.

I want to make it clear that I've unmuted and turned every volume to 100 in alsamixer.

Any ideas? Theres no Center/Rear volume channels like there were with my Audigy 2 (on x86)... but, this definitly supports 7.1 (works perfect in Windows dual-boot).

Thanks in advance.

[Schwin97]

Can't help with your problem, but I was wondering what driver you used for the realtek audio? My computer has yet to find the audio....

Thanks!

[revertex]

you can find a driver in the realtek website, but for 2.4 kernel series, useless to me.
Is there a driver for 2.6 anywere??

[krall]

The driver for the alc850 is intel8x0. It supports the AC97 standard.

I am using an Epox 8KDA3J Nvidia Nforce3 mobo as well, and i too have
not been able to utilize neither the rear speakers nor the center (i'm not sure
the subwoofer is used either).

If anyone has succeeded in doing so, please help!

[ziegs]

the driver doesn't seem to support hardware mixing yet. you have to use dmix. i believe i read somewhere that the chipset simply doesn't support hardware mixing, so perhaps in windows its doing it through a software layer?

i have it working with dmix, ssame problem with an nforce4 on the same audio chip.

[krall]

ziegs, you may be holding the keys of happiness!

Do you have your alsa configured so that you can hear sounds from your rear speakers, and from your center and sub-woofer too?

[ziegs]

well while i hear sound coming from the rear and sub, its not true surround. its stereo, but all the speakers are playing. i haven't tried it with a full 7.1 set of speakers, i only have a 4.1 around. good enough for UT and listening to music though i guess. theres a dmix tutorial on gentoo-wiki.com, it might be worth checking out

[Ert3R}]

try to enable in your mixer "line-in as surround" and "duplicate front" options.

bye

[eNTi]

i'm having difficutlies getting surround to work again. alsa+audigy 2. sound is completely freaking out if i try to watch a movie with 5.1.

[Garwin]

Anybody ever tried those?

Code: Select all

media-sound/nforce-audio [ Masked ]
      Latest version available: 1.0.0301
      Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
      Size of downloaded files: 9,097 kB
      Homepage:    http://www.nvidia.com/
      Description: Linux kernel module for the NVIDIA's nForce SoundStorm audio chipset
      License:     NVIDIA

http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/nfor ... Notes.html

[ziegs]

# Q: Linux distributions are moving towards ALSA as the standard sound driver architecture, but nvsound is an OSS driver. Why don't you provide an ALSA driver?

A: Our priority in shipping the nvsound driver was to provide support for nForce hardware features that were missing in the earlier nvaudio driver. NVIDIA plans to provide an nForce ALSA driver in future as our resources allow.

those are OSS drivers only, and most everyone now is using 2.6 with alsa and oss emulation instead of pure oss.

[krall]

I opened a bug report on the gentoo bugzilla, for the surround issue when using an nforce3 board:
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88272

Please take a look, and feel free to add your remarks (also support raising the priority if you feel this issue is important for you too!)


btw, the ebuild that was reffered to here is only for nforce2, since nforce3 doesn't have soundstorm.

[Garwin]

I know that they are oss-modules. Does it matter if you use a deprecated sound system if it works for you or anybody else?
The Ebuild says Soundstorm, but its the same driverversion on the nvidia-page and they relate to intel8x0 <shrugs>
Just wanted to know if somebody out there tried it, i am fine with my soundblaster live though.