Surround sound in Linux

[squall_dc]

Hi everyone! I am new here, but I just got a ps3 and playing around with linux (and loving it ).

Has anyone got surround sound working on linux on the PS3?
I've built mplayer and can pretty much stream all of my video files from my pc (avi, mpg, ts, wmv) through mplayer, but haven't had much luck getting 5.1 audio (tried all the command line options like -ac hwac3, -channels 6, etc).

The performance is pretty good most of the time, but the lack of any 2d video acceleration really hurts playing videos through linux.
Especially when you do any scaling or post-processing on hi-def video.
Although I'm sure once people invest some time offloading that onto the spe's, it'll be sweet!

Thanks for any help!

[Zafle]

tried alsamixer? never messed with surround but there should be an alsa command to do it if alsamixer doesnt help

[squall_dc]

Thanks for the suggestion Zafle.
Yeah, I've tried alsamixer, it only shows the pcm channel. I've checked the alsa configuration files and they have spdif device and the iec958 device in it.

[Zafle]

strange, here are some links i found that might be some help

http://alsa.opensrc.org/SurroundSound
http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~bondhugu/alsamch.shtml
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Surround_Sound

let me know if those help at all

[squall_dc]

Thanks again for the links Zafle!

I'll try them out tonight and see how it goes.

[Zafle]

ok sounds good

[squall_dc]

I tried them out but no luck
All my device settings seem correct (from looking at the files in /proc/asound/*)
and my configuration files in /etc/alsa/* all look fine too.

Oh well, I'll just wait and see if anyone else can confirm they can get 5.1 sound working first before trying again.

Thanks for all your help!

[Zafle]

yup,
if someone could post a working config file that would be sweet

[Hans]

Squall dc,

Would you please inform how I can get the mplayer and get it work in PS3 in YD5? Can you just send me the excutable or I need to compile it by myself. If it is the case, would you please inform how I can compile it. Thanks.

Hans

[squall_dc]

I've uploaded my compile of mplayer here:

mplayer.zip - 2.83MB

Normal place to install this is to extract it to /usr/local/bin
I've enabled subtitle support, but you will need to setup the font you want. Eg:

ln -s /usr/local/enlightenment/share/enlightenment/data/fonts/Vera.ttf ~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf

One example of using mplayer is:

mplayer -framedrop -vsync -vo sdl -aspect 1.3333 my_widescreen_vid.avi

You should play around with the command line arguments to see what suits you (you will need further command line arguments to use subtitles).

If you want to recompile from source yourself, you can get the source from:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html

[RacerX10]

can somebody give me a step by step on getting that mplayer in the previous post working ?

thanks !

dld

[greg0226]

Squall: were you able to get the surround sound issue working in linux? I am having the same problem and would love to find a fix for it. Thanks.