[pulseaudio-discuss] ALC892 on Clevo P150HM and too many (?) options in pavucontrol

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Julian Sikorski at 20/06/11 22:19 did gyre and gimble:
> W dniu 20.06.2011 10:33, Colin Guthrie pisze:
>> 'Twas brillig, and Julian Sikorski at 19/06/11 20:31 did gyre and gimble:
>>> W dniu 19.06.2011 18:20, Colin Guthrie pisze:
>>>> The output from amixer -c0 would likely offer some clues.
>>>
>>> I am attaching the screenshot of alsamixer -c0
>>
>> The amixer -c0 output is infinity more useful for debug than a screenshot ;)
>>
>> Col
>>
>>
> Here you go.

OK, so something is missing here... it's missing any kcontrols for
adjusting any surround sound elements.


Every bit of hardware is different, but e.g. on I happen to have to hand
says (among other things):

Simple mixer control 'Surround',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch penum
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 31
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 0 [0%] [-46.50dB] [off]
  Front Right: Playback 0 [0%] [-46.50dB] [off]
Simple mixer control 'Surround Down Mix',0
  Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined penum
  Playback channels: Mono
  Mono: Playback [off]
Simple mixer control 'Surround Jack Mode',0
  Capabilities: enum
  Items: 'Shared' 'Independent'
  Item0: 'Shared'
Simple mixer control 'Center',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined penum
  Playback channels: Mono
  Limits: Playback 0 - 31
  Mono: Playback 31 [100%] [0.00dB] [off]
Simple mixer control 'Center/LFE Down Mix',0
  Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined penum
  Playback channels: Mono
  Mono: Playback [off]
Simple mixer control 'LFE',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined penum
  Playback channels: Mono
  Limits: Playback 0 - 31
  Mono: Playback 0 [0%] [-46.50dB] [off]



So something is wrong at the alsa level. You may be able to play back
5.1 sound but there are no controls to back that up.

You should try something like e.g.

[colin at jimmy ~]$ pasuspender bash
[colin at jimmy ~]$ speaker-test -D surround51:0

speaker-test 1.0.24.2

Playback device is surround51:0
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 1 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Channels count (1) not available for playbacks: Invalid argument
Setting of hwparams failed: Invalid argument
[colin at jimmy ~]$ exit


I expect you'll get a similar failure I get there. If it works correctly
and you hear things from each speaker separately then I'd be surprised.

But if it does fail, then it could simply be a matter that the incorrect
model was detected for your HDA driver.

http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sound/alsa/HD-Audio-Models.txt

You can set this in your /etc/modprobe.conf (or a file in /etc/modprobe.d/):

options snd-hda-intel model=foo

(or something similar).


To try out different modules. You will have to reload your alsa drivers
fro this to take effect (a reboot is simplest, so if you don't have many
options for your chipset, that's probably easier. If you have a few to
try, I'd read up a bit on how to reload your alsa drivers manually
without rebooting :))


Hopefully when you get the right model, your surround51 device will work
and PA can pick it up.


So I'm pretty sure the problem is lower down than PA. I had someone on
IRC the other day with the same problem, but they refused to believe me,
even when they posted their amixer output that did not include any
surround controls.... Not much I can do other than point out things that
look wrong to me, so I hope you can find the right solution and answer
this conundrum :)

Col


-- 

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

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