Helena 5.1 audio issue

[Helix the II]

If you view my previous thread http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=42734 you'll see I got 5.1 to work on Gloria with Husse's assistance. However I changed up to Helena and I cannot for the life of me get surround to work properly.

If I use the sound profile under the volume control and change my settings to Analog Surround 5.1 Output and try adjusting any of the volumes (such as Balance, Fading, or Subwoofer) I get really distorted audio artifacts (garbled sound) during play back. I also tried using speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -l1 -twav to test my settings and I get

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Playback open error: -16,Device or resource busy

I made the changes I listed in my previous thread

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alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel  # possibly not needed
options snd-hda-intel model=6stack

and

Opening alsa-mixer in a terminal
scrolled right to Channel
Changed 2 to 6

The only thing I didn't do was upgrade the Alsa drivers. I'm unsured if I should do that or not.

Thoughts?

[remoulder]

The only thing I didn't do was upgrade the Alsa drivers. I'm unsured if I should do that or not

Don't do this manually, use the backports to get the latest alsa built by the ubuntu devs.

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apt install linux-backports-modules-karmic linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic-generic

and update your kernel by making Level 5 Visible in mintupdate preferences. I'm not saying this will solve your problem, sound has been troublesome in karmic.

[Helix the II]

remoulder, you're all over my threads, thank you. I appreciate it!

I'm doing what you suggested at this moment. If I open the Gnome Alsa mixer things perform a little better... but the system is treating center & left rear as the same channel and is treating LFE and right rear as the same channel.... talk about odd.