Alsa+nforce4+center speaker

[eronde]

Hello,

I've a little question about alsa and nforce4.

I'm getting confused about alsa-oss.
Last week I connect three jacks from my sound card to my audio-system to get 5.1 surround sound on my pc.
After I connected the jacks I've tested my speakers with the following command:

Code: Select all

 speaker-test -Dsurround51 -c 6

The rearleft,rearright,left,right are working, but my center speaker doesn't work.

Know I read on this forum about nforce-audio. I've a force4 chip, but my sound card is a:

Code: Select all

0000:00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a2)

And I'm wondering of I can use nforce-audio instead alsa to getting my center speaker work.

Does anyone have the same problem or a solution to this problem?

[Apreche]

What wires are connecting your speakers to your computer? Are they digital speakers or analog? Also, show your /proc/asound/devices and your asoundrc.

[eronde]

The wires are jacks(tulp) the same wireing to connect your dvd to your audio-system, I put one in side-speaker, rear-speaker and center.

/proc/asound/device:

Code: Select all

 18: [0- 2]: digital audio playback
 25: [0- 1]: digital audio capture
 16: [0- 0]: digital audio playback
 24: [0- 0]: digital audio capture
  0: [0- 0]: ctl
  1:       : sequencer
 33:       : timer

/etc/asound.state

Code: Select all

pcm.snd_card {
    type hw
    card 0
}
pcm.dmix {
    type dmix
    ipc_key 1024
    slave.pcm snd_card
    slave.period_time 0
    slave.period_size 1024
    slave.buffer_size 8192
    bindings {
        0 0
        1 1
    }
}
pcm.dsnoop {
    type dsnoop
    ipc_key 2048
    slave.pcm snd_card
    bindings {
        0 0
        1 1
    }
}
pcm.duplex {
    type asym
    playback.pcm dmix
    capture.pcm dsnoop
}
pcm.dsp0 {
    type plug
    slave.pcm duplex
}
ctl.nforce-hw {
    type hw
    card 0
}
ctl.dsp0 {
    type plug
    slave.pcm snd_card
pcm.dsnoop {
    type dsnoop
    ipc_key 2048
    slave.pcm snd_card
    bindings {
        0 0
        1 1
    }
}
pcm.duplex {
    type asym
    playback.pcm dmix
    capture.pcm dsnoop
}
pcm.dsp0 {
    type plug
    slave.pcm duplex
}
ctl.nforce-hw {
    type hw
    card 0
}
ctl.dsp0 {
    type plug
    slave.pcm snd_card
}
ctl.mixer0 {
    type plug
    slave.pcm snd_card
}
state.CK804 {
    testdevice {
        type route
        slave.pcm 'pcm.surround51'
        slave.channels 6
        ttable.0.3 1
    }

Sorry, I don't know if they are digital or analog.

I don't have a file named asoundrc.

[gaz514]

I'm having exactly the same problem, I just got some Creative 5.1 speakers and I can't hear anything from the centre speaker, I ran the speakertest thing and got no sound from Center (or LFE for that matter, although I'm not sure what that is)

[Apreche]

I'm not talking about how the speakers are wired up. I'm talking about the wire that connects your speakers to your computer. But I already see the problem. The way your configuration reads now is that you are sending four channels of audio, front/rear left and front/rear right, to your speakers. However, it is not really four channels of audio. What you have is stereo sound simply being copied so the front and rear are exactly the same.

I can also tell that you are using card 0 and device 0, which is analog audio playback. Card 0 device 2 is digital audio output via optical cable or spdif, that's what I use.

You basically have 4 options.

1) Get digital speakers and start using card 0 device 2, you will get perfect 5.1 audio with alsa. I went out and specifically bought some logitech z-5500s so I could do this.

2) Stick with what you got.

3) Use the nforce-audio driver. You will get perfect 5.1 audio with one caveat. No alsa. You can currently only use OSS with the nforce-audio driver afaik. NVidia claims they are working on making an alsa version, but it's been a long time coming. In fact, I don't even see nforce audio on NVidias website anymore. Yikes.

4) Discover something magical. I've been looking around the Internet for a solution to this problem for years. At the present time there is simply no way I have found to get alsa to output surround sound properly with analog speakers. At least it isn't possible with intel8x0 or emu10k1 sound cards. This is because you have to get alsa to talk to the sound hardware and tell it special instructions for sending out surround sound. I have seen windows drivers do it, but never Linux. If it is possible, then the configuration that enables it is the best kept secret on the net. Let me know if you find it! If there is such a configuration they really need to make an easier way to enable it, perhaps with the alsa mixer.

[eronde]

Thnx apreche,

I'll try option 3. Is there some how-to about nforce-audio as you know?

[Apreche]

I've tried nforce-audio once before. Remove your alsa use flag. Then remove the alsa drivers and other alsa software. Remove alsa from the kernel if need be, make sure OSS is in the kernel. Emerge nforce audio. Tell all your audio software like XMMS to play through OSS. If you want you can use esound or arts on top of OSS.

[eronde]

Thnx, I'll let you know if it work.

[eronde]

I've tried nfroce-audia, but Here it's not working:(

[pinr]

I'd really like some help getting 5.1 sound out of the nforce-audio drivers. I have an AMD 64 system with a Gigabyte GAK8NS motherboard and an nForce3 250 chipset. I have a set of Logitech Z640 5.1 speakers. Using Alsa I am able to get sound from all 6 speakers by enabling duplicate front in kmixer and using the line out, mike and line in sockets on the motherboard as 3 outputs, however this is not true surround. I understand that nvidia-audio should support surrond so here is what I've done to try and get it working.
1) emerged nvidia-audio
2) enabled oss in kernel and disabled alsa
3) placed nvsound in modules.autoload
4) removed the alsa file from /etc/modules.d and created a file nvsound with the lines
alias sound-slot-0 nvsound
alias sound-card-0 nvsound
alias snd-intel8x0 off
alias i810_audio off
5) rc-update del alsasound boot
When I reboot the nvsound module is loaded and I have sound, however it is only 2 channel sound coming out of the line out. If I start nvmixer the I can control the volume on the left and right channels only the other speaker volume controls have no effect. The speaker wizard and surrond options are also grayed out. I've searced the web high and low for a solution, but I can only find other poor souls with the same problem and no answer. Can anyone shed some light on why surround is not working?

[pinr]

Well for the benefit of others here is some additional information. Basically you need to use 6 channel encoded files to get surround from the nvsound if you use just normal files you only get 2 channel sound. You can download some 6 channel encoded oggs and wavs here to test.
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=SurroundSound
You can play the files with:
mplayer -channels 6 <input file>
However, I have found the nvsound driver to be pretty useless. I only tried it briefly and now I've decided to go back to ALSA which has 6 channel plus I managed to get surround working with Alsa (see something magical below).
A list of problems I found with nvsound after 10 minutes of use:
1) No ouput from rear or centre speakers with normal mp3s or other 2 channel encoded sound. You need to use 5.1 encoded files.
2)No sound with Doom 3 or Quake 4
3) Skype doesn't work

Discover something magical. I've been looking around the Internet for a solution to this problem for years. At the present time there is simply no way I have found to get alsa to output surround sound properly with analog speakers.

Here's something magical for you Apreche
mplayer dvd://1 -v -aid 128 -ao oss -channels 6 2>&1|grep AC3:
That gives me true surround sound on my system using the alsa oss emulation layer. You can get more info here:
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/do ... e=intel8x0
Scrol down the page

[Apreche]

Ahh, that is pretty good trick. You got mplayer to convert the AC3 audio data into six seperate channels. Not too shabby.

If that is the functionality you wanted, then there is no problem. The functionality I was talking about was slightly different. You see, if you use windows and the correct driver for your sound card then every audio you play will come out of all the speakers. You see the windows driver will give special instructions to the sound card so that in hardware it will figure out which sounds to send to which speakers and all of them will be used. THAT is what I thought you were out to achieve. That is the functionality that is missing from alsa. And actually, in my experience, the nforce-audio driver provided that functionality.

I'm still in the middle of writing my ultimate guide to linux audio. When it's ready I'll definitely include these details.

[pinr]

If that is the functionality you wanted, then there is no problem. The functionality I was talking about was slightly different. You see, if you use windows and the correct driver for your sound card then every audio you play will come out of all the speakers. You see the windows driver will give special instructions to the sound card so that in hardware it will figure out which sounds to send to which speakers and all of them will be used. THAT is what I thought you were out to achieve. That is the functionality that is missing from alsa. And actually, in my experience, the nforce-audio driver provided that functionality.
etails.

Well of course I would love to have the functionality you describe in Windows, personally I couldn't get this to work with the nsound drivers and as I said in my previous post two channel encoded sound is only played through the front 2 speakers. I guess I will just stick with Alsa at least I have surrond with DVDs and 6 channel output elsewhere. Can you recommend a cheapish sound card that will give me full surround in Linux using Alsa.

[bus.dch]

Can you recommend a cheapish sound card that will give me full surround in Linux using Alsa.

Yeah.

It looks like there aren't any. (that I know of) (maybe a Creative XFi, but that's not a cheapish!)

Okay, that's just my $0.02 on that. Sorry, ignore it since I didn't even search the web.

What I'm trying to figure out is how to get the ad198x chip to work.

I installed alsa-utils and alsa-drivers. Then I rebooted and ran alsaconf. lsmod shows intel_hda and intel_hda_codec. dmesg shows it found an ad198x. I even got sound out once, with a high frequency pitch but with sound. That was, it worked for a few seconds until I fired up alsamixer to turn the volume down. Then the sound stopped. aplay was still running. Started aplay again. No dice. emerge alsa-utils-1.0.11_rc2 and emerge alsa-drivers-1.0.11_rc2. Still the same, only alsamixer started up with everything muted. Turn everything on, 100%. aplay produces no sound. Anyone?

lspci -v -v shows:

Code: Select all

00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
	Subsystem: nVidia Corporation Unknown device cb84
	Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
	Latency: 0 (500ns min, 1250ns max)
	Interrupt: pin B routed to IRQ 233
	Region 0: Memory at febd8000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2
		Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold+)
		Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
	Capabilities: [50] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable-
		Address: 0000000000000000  Data: 0000
	Capabilities: [6c] HyperTransport: MSI Mapping

I don't know what to try to get sound out. I'm going to try to get 5.1 out eventually, but anything is a start!

[bus.dch]

Okay, I found this [topic=414308]topic[/topic] about my specific motherboard. It's still active, so I'll go over there.