Re: hda intel driver and no surround sound with nvidia mcp55 (chip ID RealTek 888)

[Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>]

At Mon, 07 Aug 2006 09:52:08 -0300,
Tim Burrell wrote:
> 
> >>>> I'm trying to get multichannel sound working on my nvidia nforce 590
> >>>> based mobo that uses the intel hd audio (nvidia mcp55) chipset.  It
> >>>> plays fine in two channels but any attempts to use -Dsurround51 or
> >>>> -Dsurround40 fail.  Ie:
> >>>>
> >>>> Playing WAVE 'space_battle.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate
> >>>> 44100 Hz, Channels 6
> >>>> aplay: set_params:906: Channels count non available
> >>> That's correct. Use -Dplug:surround40, because the count of channels from 
> >>> the .wav file has to be converted to four.
> >> I just upgraded to 1.0.12_rc2, and I've got a lot more mixer controls in
> >> alsamixer now.  I can see front, rear, surround, etc.  And now I can
> >> finally specify -Dplug:surround71 to get 8 channel audio!
> >>
> >> However, there is one problem.  On my card the channels are not exactly
> >> correct when running speaker-test.  The side and rear speakers are
> >> reversed.  I double checked this with my card's manual, and in Windows.
> > 
> > Does -Dplug:surround51 work as expected?
> 
> speaker-test hangs when I use plug:surround51, however since upgrading I
> incorrectly said that mplayer hangs when playing multichannel audio.
> When playing a 6 channel audio file with mplayer (it says it uses
> surround51) it also has the rear and side channels reversed.  Obviously
> since it's 6 channel audio the side channels are not used, but the rear
> channels come out of the side speakers.

OK, then it's either a bug of BIOS or a specification of HD-audio.
A tentative patch is below.


> >> Also, curiously, using the same settings as speaker-test (which works
> >> fine), aplay hangs when trying to play multichannel audio files.  Same
> >> for mplayer (with or without -channels settings).
> > 
> > What do you mean "hang"?
> 
> By hang, I mean aplay and speaker-test open the device fine, and begin
> playing, but do not play any samples and then just sit there
> indefinitely.

Interesting.  So, you started like:

	% aplay -Dplug:surround51 somefile.wav

??  Does any process block the sound device?  You can check it via
"lsof /dev/snd/pcm* /dev/dsp*", for example.


>  Ie I see the following output from `speaker-test
> -Dplug:surround51 -c 6`:
> 
> Playback device is plug:surround51
> Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 6 channels
> Using 16 octaves of pink noise
> Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
> Buffer size range from 22 to 5461
> Period size range from 11 to 2730
> Using max buffer size 5460
> Periods = 4
> was set period_size = 1365
> was set buffer_size = 5460
>  0 - Front Left
> 
> Then no audio is heard and it sits there and does nothing until I press
> ctrl-c.
> 
> The same goes for aplay using either -Dplug:surround51 OR -Dplug:surround71.

"same" == "aplay doesn't process any samples"?

What shows "aplay -v -Dplug:surround51 some6ch.wav" ?


Takashi


diff -r 3f196675e724 pci/hda/hda_codec.c
--- a/pci/hda/hda_codec.c	Fri Aug 04 19:08:03 2006 +0200
+++ b/pci/hda/hda_codec.c	Mon Aug 07 14:55:42 2006 +0200
@@ -2122,16 +2122,19 @@ int snd_hda_parse_pin_def_config(struct 
 	 */
 	switch (cfg->line_outs) {
 	case 3:
+	case 4:
 		nid = cfg->line_out_pins[1];
 		cfg->line_out_pins[1] = cfg->line_out_pins[2];
 		cfg->line_out_pins[2] = nid;
 		break;
+#if 0 /* seems wrong */
 	case 4:
 		nid = cfg->line_out_pins[1];
 		cfg->line_out_pins[1] = cfg->line_out_pins[3];
 		cfg->line_out_pins[3] = cfg->line_out_pins[2];
 		cfg->line_out_pins[2] = nid;
 		break;
+#endif
 	}
 
 	/*

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