Re: speaker-test: no correct sound output on LFE and others speakers

[Franco Martelli <martellif67@gmail.com>]

Hi Alexandre,

On 30/04/24 at 14:07, Alexandre Rossi wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > Basically I've the same issue described here:
> > https://askubuntu.com/questions/1180389/speaker-test-returns-all-6-channels-to-front-speakers
> >
> > The speaker-test program is provided by the alsa-utils package. I'm using
> > Debian 12 Bookworm, I've no ~/.asoundrc file. My /proc/asound/cards returns:
> >
> > ~$ cat /proc/asound/cards
> >   0 [SB             ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI SB
> >                        HDA ATI SB at 0xfe400000 irq 16
> >   1 [NVidia         ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
> >                        HDA NVidia at 0xfe080000 irq 57
> >
> > I've 5.1 speakers the LOGITECH Z906 audio system plugged to the PC via 3
> > jacks (left/right), (Center/Subwoofer), (Rear left/ Rear right).
>
> I assume your cabling is right and your SB soundcard has surround out
> (3 jacks as you describe it, and not mic and line out for instance). The labels
> on the jacks would confirm that, so would the user manual of your motherboard or
> sound card.

The MoBo is an old ASUSTeK Computer Inc. M5A99X EVO (R1.0) and it has 
three jacks of different colors to connect to the Logitech Z906 case, 
there aren't labels, only colored jacks: Orange, Black and Lime there is 
also a Gray jack for "Side speakers" so the hardware support up to 
Surround 7.1 in addition it also have an optical S/PDIF out port unused.
The audio device is:

~# lspci -nnv -s 00:14.2
00:14.2 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] 
SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) [1002:4383] (rev 40)
        Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) 
[1043:84fb]
        Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 32, IRQ 16, NUMA node 
0, IOMMU group 10
        Memory at fe400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
        Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
        Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel


> > The issue is that speaker-test doesn't play sound to the correct speaker. If
> > I run:
> >
> > ~$ speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -s3 -f75
> >
> > The sound comes from (Center), (Front right), (Rear left) and (Rear right)
> > speakers instead (Front right) only.
>
> What's bothering me is that you get sound from multiple speakers while
> instructing out on only one.
>
> The usual issues of these setups with surround analog out are:
> - channel mapping issues (driver/hardware mismatch)
> - software downmixing to stereo
>
> There are other usual issues with surrount digital out but this is not
> your setup.
>
> You can have a look at [1] for software fixes on this.
>
> [1] https://alsa.opensrc.org/SurroundSound

The link you posted it shows rather outdated fixes, it talked about 
Jackd daemon and surround, but I have pulseaudio daemon, maybe I've 
pulseaudio daemon misconfiguration, I tried what suggested here:

https://askubuntu.com/a/1304054

but unluckily  it doesn't work, this is what's enabled in 
/etc/pulse/daemon.conf:

~$ grep -v "^#\|^;\|^[[:space:]]*$" /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
remixing-produce-lfe = yes
remixing-consume-lfe = yes
lfe-crossover-freq = 80

and this is what's in the log after a reboot:

~# journalctl -b | grep pulseaudio
mag 01 14:57:28 itek systemd[1254]: Listening on pulseaudio.socket - 
Sound System.
mag 01 14:57:28 itek systemd[1254]: Starting pulseaudio.service - Sound 
Service...
mag 01 14:57:32 itek systemd[1254]: Started pulseaudio.service - Sound 
Service.
mag 01 14:57:48 itek pulseaudio[1273]: Hole in stream, cannot fast 
forward LFE filter
mag 01 14:57:48 itek pulseaudio[1273]: Hole in stream, cannot fast 
forward LFE filter
mag 01 14:57:54 itek plasmashell[1390]: org.kde.plasma.pulseaudio: No 
object for name "alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-surround-51.monitor"

any clue? Thank you very much

--
Franco Martelli