Getting soundcard surround working properly

Thanks, that screenshot is displayed OK.
I assume if you increase the 'Headphone' level, you get headphone stereo output if plugged in?
I am concerned that only Left, Right and Centre are shown on alsamixer.
What happens if you push all the output channel levels to 100%?

I have completed the:

pacmd set-card-profile 1 output:analog-surround-51

But all this does is, setting it to a profile, and getting a dummy output again.
So I was able to get it back using:

pacmd set-card-profile 1 output:analog-surround-40

As per your question: I'm using the Orange, Black, Green plugs on the card (wired to subwoofer, which is taking care of splitting to surround). I have increased headphone level to 100 and ran speaker-test -c 6 -t wav again, but there's no difference.

I honestly don't know what plug the headset would need to go in, since the card only has input (pink and blue) left.

I could insert a headphone in the volumemodule of the surround set, on the onboard rear, or front of pc, but doubt this would be hit differently by the surround card.

Also to note, onboard audio is disabled in bios.

Also, like I said, when using speaker-test --buffer 100000 -D surround51:1,0 -c 6 -t wav the speakers get hit perfectly.

It seems to fail, when setting the profile, which is very confusing to me.

@zabadabadoo

In alsamixer I can see:
Front (which I'm guessing would be front-left and front-right)
Surround (which I'm guessing would be rear-left and rear-right)
Center (which would be center)
LFE (which would be subwoofer/bass)

As per your request I've pushed all to 100 output.

As long as I have dummy output (triggered by a profile issue, I'm guessing) I won't have any sound using either the gui or

speaker-test --buffer 100000 -c 6 -t wav

unless I specifically use

speaker-test --buffer 100000 -D surround51:1,0 -c 6 -t wav

This will also give no different volume experience.
It only seems to work perfectly when using "-D surround51:1,0" or another way to force the card as stated in the start-post.

4.0 is really close though.

Is there a way to "change" or add a profile to pulseaudio?
Maybe it's possible to change the settings in a profile from e.g. 4.0 to 5.1 ?

EDIT: My reply below was to your post #22
Whilst I have had my own sound problems in the past, I do not have surround sound card/speakers to fight with.
If you get real desperate, I think your easiest way out could be another USB external DAC.

You can certainly store alsamixer settings using:

sudo alsactl store

I don't know about saving pulse audio profile changes myself, but just found this:

This pertains to alsamixer, but these generally look fine. However good to know it uses /var/lib/alsa/asound.state , maybe I can find something there.

Regarding the persistent profile, this is not a problem. The profile is kept on reboot, the problem is setting to the maleficent profile, causing a dummy output.

I'm thinking of trying to force set the part

hw:1,0
-D surround51:1,0

from the speaker-test, as default, one way or another.

Might try again tomorrow.

In your Software & Updates app, do what drivers are displayed under Additional Drivers?

I thought all audio related drivers are included in the kernel.
Especially in this case, the card was first released 2013. The driver for ALC898 should be a part of the kernel by now.

1 Like

Not sure if this topic will do any help

First, be sure to blacklist any other sound sources such as HDMI:

Next dump pulse audio by creating a 'pulse off' folder in /etc and moving 'pulse audio' into it - pulse will then never launch! - as stated here - scroll down to last answer that got a -1 vote - it worked great for me:

Use synaptic Package Manager to install the SoundBlaster emu10k files and all the apps starting with QAS: QasTools, QasConfig and QasMixer and all ALSA sound packages, plus 'apulse'.

The only issue I have got with surround sound (I have Logitech Surround Sound System) is that in all current Linux Distros I get the 5.1 Suround sound but right front is churning out subwoofer and subwoofer front right - plus front left is centre speakers and centre is left speaker!

1 Like

Thank you for responding while I was away, I'll address as much as I can in this post.

Only the video card is shown:

@FrenchPress
I can't remember having to install anything before testing the card, so that's my guess too.

@swarfendor437
I have to check your linked post still. So far I had HDMI output turned off in pavucontrol and the machine is using the SoundBlaster as default (as long as I don't select a wrong (broken?) profile.

image

I wouldn't mind blacklisting the HDMI, will follow up!

So, funny thing:

image

So when going to nano /etc/modprobe.d/sound.blacklist.conf as instructed, I would have to disable "snd_hda_intel", which would blacklist both.

I seem to recall reading somewhere about someone who changed what driver the HDMI output was using to something like "snd_hda_intel_nvidia" to prevent the identical driver.

It seems I will have to check that out first.

I may be asking you a silly question, but did you disable the M/B built-in sound card in BIOS? I think I disabled mine since I installed a PCI sound-card.

No problem, I'd rather double-check than ignore.
BIOS onboard audio is indeed disabled to prevent a third card from showing up and interfering.

There is yet one more Linux forum page regarding Audigy FX:

But it is quite old posting - so it may not applicable to the current kernel we are using.

Thanks! This is the one I was recalling with renaming the driver.

2 Likes

HDMI shows up as snd_hda_intel - just blacklisting that will disable hdmi on all your graphics cards.
I disabled pulse as it causes more problems than it is worth - that is why I ditched it in favour of ALSA - far superior - it is just a Red Hat thing who want to spread their C R A P everywhere, including the automotive audio industry!

I remember to read somewhere that to disable PulseAudio one needs to disable LightDM GDM also. Was that what you did?

GDM, not LightDM.

Thanks for the correction!
Are we using GDM in Zorin 16 Core/Pro?