[pulseaudio-discuss] cmipci, pulseaudio and 5.1 — unable to contol center/LFE

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Jan Braun at 18/08/10 14:19 did gyre and gimble:
> Erik Boritsch schrob:
>> I have a CM8738-MC6 soundcard with 5.1 analog surround. With pulseaudios
>> 5.1 profile I am unable to control center and LFE channels.
>> [...]
>> In my case, it seems that center/LFE are on hw:1,1 (with other channels
>> being on hw:1,0). I have tried adding followings to .asoundrc:
>> [...]
>> With this config I can control volume for all the channels
>> simultaneously in alsa using the "Softmaster" control. 
>> However, I am lost about how can I make this work in pulseaudio. 
>> I can edit analog-output.conf.common to make pulseaudio control
>> "SoftMaster", but this control doesn't affect sounds routed through
>> pulseaudio.
> 
> (Warning: I'm just guessing here...)
> 
> By default, PA finds soundcards via module-{udev-|hal-|}detect, which
> probably will pick up your physical card rather than the alsa !default.
> So you might try something like
> | load-module module-alsa-sink device=softvol
> in default.pa to make PA use the softvol device.


I think that rather than going through hoops, you can just pass the
control= argument and the load of the sink and pass instead the
SoftMaster control name.

Look at the pulseaudio -vvv output to see how the sink is loaded and
then copy those arguments exactly and add the control=SoftMaster to the
loop.

Alternatively you can find a way to plugin the softvol control into your
card properly via alsa configuration (i.e. by looking at the files in
/usr/share/alsa/ and seeing how to override things)

Col

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Colin Guthrie
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http://colin.guthr.ie/

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