[mwhwsmith]

I have an Acer Aspire Revo R3600 (Intel Atom 230, 1.6GHz, 1GB, NVidia) running a new install of Ubuntu 10.10 and XBMC ?.

I am getting stereo sound through my HDMI cable but want to get full surround sound.

aplay -l and aplay -L suggest the card / driver is there. I have updated the pulse daemon.config file to enable 6 speakers.


In XBMC, I have changed the audio settings to output to HDMI, set speak configuration to 5.1, enabled AC3 and DTS, set-up a custom passthru output device (hdmi:CARD=Generic,DEV=0). However with these settings XBMC tells me that it "can't initialize audio devices". However, if I put these back to the defaults then movies paly with stereo sound from RL and FR speakers.

Any suggestions as to what I can do to fix this?

Thanks
- M

[h.udo]

Try using the latest alsa.

Look in my sig for the link.

h.udo

[mwhwsmith]

I have done that and installed the up to date ALSA but still no luck.

I notice that when I go to System > Preferences > Sound Preferences, on the hardware tab I only have the option of "Internal Audio Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output".

I would assume I would need something that suggested Surround Sound Output or 5.1 or similar. Is this my problem? Any suggests how I can fix this?

Thanks
- M

[harryzimm]

Hi,

You need to remove pulseaudio.

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio

Then in xbmc change output device and passthrough to custom and type "plughw:0,3" without the quotes. If you still dont get sound, make sure all iec devices are unmuted in alsamixer.

cheers

[mwhwsmith]

It works !!!!

Fantastic - thank you.

- M