Just switched over to Ubuntu as my primary OS and been working (hard) get to get everything working properly. Still worth it thought.
Anyway, one of the more difficult problems was getting 5.1 sound out of the sound card in Ubuntu. The motherboard has a built-in 5.1 sound card, the realtek ACL662. Some people have little trouble enabling surround sound but there seems to be an issue with this card. I managed to find a solution by merging a few ideas together.
Here are the steps I took:
- By default, Ubuntu is only set to run 2 sound channels (left and right). To enable 6 channels (5.1) we need to edit the sound config file. Theres an excellent tutorial for doing that here. But put simply, edit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf and uncomment the line
"; default-sample-channels = 2", changing it to"default-sample-channels = 6" - The most important part for this card. Edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base and add
"options snd-hda-intel model=3stack-6ch-dig"to the end of the file. - Restart the machine.
- Open sound preferences (System > Preferences > Sound)
- Make sure that the ALSA mixer is selected.
- Bring up the sound mixer.
- Hopefully, the “Front, Center, Surround & LFE” sliders will be available. If not try to add them by clicking on Properties.
- Make sure all sliders are on full.
- Still on the mixer, go to the ‘Options’ tab and set ‘Channel mode’ to ‘6ch’.
- Ok everything and close the mixer.
- To test, at the command line try
"$ speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -l1 -twav"
Hopefully that’ll do it. If not, there are a tonne of other guides if you search for “Ubuntu 5.1 sound”. Checkout the forum post that helped me find this solution here, at the Ubuntu forums.
If options 7 and/or 9 aren’t available to you, I’d guess the fix hasn’t solved your problem.
6 Comments
Thanks,
this worked a treat for me. Not sure what model my Realtek sound card is, but hey! it works!
Cheers -
Cliff
Great ! I think surround sound systems give us cinema experience in our own home. That’s why it becomes ever more popular and affordable.
You’re a hero! Saving my music anyway.
I’m on Ubuntu 9.04 x86-64 with latest updates and did this:
Added some sliders to the soundmixer:
-Rightmousebutton on the volume setting in the taskbar -> Open Volume Control, Preferences, tick the boxes there
Set every option in System -> Preferences -> Sound to ALSA (the non-specific one: “ALSA – Advanced… Architecture”)
And that was it, sounds working like a charm now, bass and everything. Thanks a lot!
The test ” speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -l1 -twav” works perfectly. But my sample 5.1 PCM-WAV files (not DTS) get jumbled up in the channels, when playing through “Movie Player”. My ALSA mixer setting is 6channel and so is the “Movie Player” preference setting. Any ideas welcome.
thanx!! actually my ubuntu 9.10 already was with 5.1 support
and command: “speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -l1 -twav” – worked fine for me..
but still in Ubuntu sound is not such perfect as under windows =((