How to enable 5.1 channels for speakers

[unnibhaskar]

Hi,

How can I enable 5.1 channels. The sound is coming in Front Left, Front Right speakers and woofer. I want the sound to come in 5.1 channels instead of 2.1.

Please help

[vjeko]

post exact hardware spec:

which sound card, whats speakers (not necessary but neat)

also what player you using for music and video

anything else you can think of is welcome

[everge48]

Hi,
How can I enable 5.1 channels. The sound is coming in Front Left, Front Right speakers and woofer. I want the sound to come in 5.1 channels instead of 2.1.
Please help

Do you have PulseAudio installed? You can install it through Synaptic. If you don't have Pulse installed it is really the way to go now for surround sound setups. There is a bit of a learning curve but it is worth it, imo.

Once you have installed everything Pulse related you can go into..
Configure Your Computer -> Hardware -> Sound Configuration
There you can check "Enable PulseAudio" as well as "Enable 5.1 sound with Piulse Audio".

If you are already familiar with Pulse and have an aversion to using it you can still get 5.1 working with ALSA: http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~bondhugu/alsamch.shtml

[saiyuki]

I too had problems with 5:1 sound through my X-Fi Audio card having only 2:1 sound. After doing all the PulseAudio suggestions in this forum i still only had 2:1 sound output.

With SmPlayer i enabled 5:1 sound by changing the output driver -

Options/Preferences/Audio/Output Driver = ALSA (0.0 - CA0106) ................. (This is the default install for my card)

I changed the Output driver to ALSA and now i have 5:1 sound playback watching films/videos etc...

With Mandriva i can use PulseAudio Volume Control to change the speaker configuration, but after installing 'Pavucontrol' from Synaptic, i get an error message - Connection Failed: Connection Refused. 

If some kind person could help with this i would be very grateful.

Regards

[unnibhaskar]

Specification

Sound card : Creative Sound Blaster 5.1 VX

Speaker : Creative Inspire T6100

Player : VLC Media Player

OS : PCLinuxOS 2010.07

I tried configuring

Configure Your Computer -> Hardware -> Sound Configuration
Enabled "Enable PulseAudio" and "Enable 5.1 sound with Pulse Audio".

But after signing out and logging in again , "Enable 5.1 sound with Pulse Audio" is getting disabled.

[Was_Just19]

IIRC .....  and that is a big IF ......

"Connection Failed: Connection Refused." .......  most likely because Pulse is disabled

But after signing out and logging in again , "Enable 5.1 sound with Pulse Audio" is getting disabled.

I think I had to do a reboot to ensure all was OK.


The single most confusing thing was that although PULSE was enabled after I ticked the box, when I went back in again it was unticked.

It took a while for me to realise this was just a 'tick display' problem and not an indication that PULSE was off.

So the way I now check if PULSE is indeed properly functioning is to go to

KDE CC - Hardware - Multimedia - select Phonon .....  and in the right pane (for each Device Preference) there should be only one entry  "PulseAudio Sound Server".

If there are other entries then Pulse is not in full control and from my experience very weird things happen ......  YMMV ......

regards.