Enabling Stereo to Surround Sound in Linux using Pulse Audio and Alsa Enabling Stereo to Surround Sound in Linux using Pulse Audio and Alsa

Now this has happened to a lot of people. They have a 5.1 sound setup etc and what happens their music only comes out of their front two.

Why, well it is because the music files that are being played are stereo and not 5.1. Unlike in Windows where you can use your soundcards software (Creative control panel anyone)

In Linux it is more complicated. It took me ages to figure it out for various distros including Ubuntu, Fedora and Suse

This should work for Audigy soundcards and maybe a few others. Remember it is not guaranteed.

(For 5.1 Speaker setup)


1) Go to a terminal and type the following Excluding the inverted commas: (Please ensure you have a root session in terminal)

"gedit .asoundc"

Enter your password. A document will come up. Paste the following into it: (Excluding the inverted commas)

"pcm.!dmix {
type plug
slave {
pcm surround51
channels 6
}
}
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmix"
slave.channels 6
route_policy duplicate
}"

Save and exit.



2) Go to a terminal and type the following Excluding the inverted commas:

"gedit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf"

Go down to the line that says " ;default-sample-channels = 2"

Change it so it looks like the following:

"default-sample-channels = 6"

Save and exit.

Now you should be getting audio from all of your speakers.

If you are using KDE replace gedit with Kwrite