[pulseaudio-discuss] Headless pulseaudio server. Creative XFi USB. Can't enable surround on Pulseaudio

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Aitor Pazos at 22/01/11 19:29 did gyre and gimble:
> Dear list,
> I've installed pulseaudio in a headless server. I can play files through all my 
> speakers (5.1) using alsa directly, but pulseaudio only creates estereo 
> profiles for the alsa sink. I've tried to force "channels=6" in default.pa for 
> the alsa-sink but it keeps loading it as a stereo sink.
> 
> "speaker-test -c 6" works fine, indeed.
> 
> My system:
> Soundcard: Creative Sound Blaster XFi USB Pro
> kernel: 2.6.35 armv5tel
> pulseaudio: 0.9.21
> 
> Is there a way to force Pulseaudio to apply a 5.1 profile?
> Any idea?

Sure, you have three choices:

1. Enable network support and use a GUI client on a non-headless system
(e.g. PULSE_SERVER=<headless_ip> pavucontrol) and pick a 5.1
Configuration profile.

2. Use "pacmd list-cards" to see a list of card profiles, then then use
"pacmd set-card-profile idx profile" to set a 5.1 profile

3. Set default-sample-channels=6 in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf


HTHs

Col

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

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