[pulseaudio-discuss] 'Failed to find a working profile' for firewire sound devices

[Alexander E. Patrakov]

Takashi Sakamoto wrote:
> Hi Alexander,
> 
>  > This is expected in the default configuration on any multichannel
>  > card. If you don't like this, please edit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf, set
>  > enable-remixing = no and report whether this helps.
> 
> Yes. It helps. This line makes it enable (disable).
> $ echo enable-remixing=no > ~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf
> 
> Can I ask you the reason to set this as default?

I am not the person who made this decision, but many people prefer their 
stereo sources to be upmixed to their 5.1 audio systems, or at least asked 
questions such as this in the pure-ALSA era, when such upmixing was hard to 
configure:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=79820

And this somewhat matches the default in off-the-shelf (consumer) hardware 
CD/DVD/BluRay players and HDMI/SPDIF receivers, in the sense that all speakers 
are active by default if you play a normal stereo audio CD. It's another 
matter that off-the-shelf hardware uses more sophisticated upmixing methods 
(such as Dolby Pro Logic).

-- 
Alexander E. Patrakov