When one is listening to a music video, the singer is overpowered by what appears to be the accompaning instruments or music. I have heard that it is a confusion with the surround sound, but even with the turned off in my speaker sets (I've tried more than one), there is still a very imbalance sound processed thru the PulseAudio system. Making matters worse is that there appears to be no setting for this problem, nor is there any combination of settings that will cause this to work correctly. I am using Fedora 20 with a Creative sound card listed as: product: 5880B [AudioPCI] [1274:5880] vendor: Ensoniq [1274] bus info: pci@0000:05:06.0 version: 02 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: Power Management, bus mastering, PCI capabilities listing configuration: driver: snd_ens1371 latency: 32 maxlatency: 128 mingnt: 12 resources: irq: 16 ioport: b000(size=64) What other information can I give you for this?
PulseAudio usually does not do much "processing" that could cause these types of effects. Could you output the contents of "pactl list" while the music video is playing back, and can you verify that this is not a problem if you output directly to ALSA, bypassing PulseAudio?
How would one do that?
I'm not that familiar with fedora, but hopefully "speaker-test" is installed. If so, I'd try the speaker-test command: speaker-test -D plughw:CARD -c 2 -t wav speaker-test -D pulse -c 2 -t wav The first plays back directly to ALSA, the second one through PulseAudio. You need to replace "CARD" in the first command with the card name, as you can look up in /proc/asound/cards (it's the name within brackets). If you want to try more channels than stereo, you can modify "-c 2" to "-c 6" or whatever number of channels you want to test.
how did you connect the Jack of your sound blaster pci 128 ? http://ask.creative.com/wwimages/audio_int/sblive/pci128_connectorsimage1.gif post the output of alsa-info.sh
Thank you all for the input. I ran the commands as requested. Here are the results: The first test played correctly. When adding 6 channels, I heard only front left and front right. The second test played correctly. When adding 6 channels, I heard the fronts normally, and the center and rears softly. Nothing else The only connector utilized is the CD audio connector to the CD drive, and the only jack used is the green one to the stereo speaker set. I saved the output of alsa-info.sh at: "Your ALSA information is located at http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=cdeb353ad094a815696678f61b15d864b16ec172" Please note the the built-in sound on the motherboard is disabled as defective. I only use the added-in Sound Blaster card. Thanks again.
you have enabled sigmatel 3d effect Simple mixer control '3D Control - Switch',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Mono: Playback [on] Simple mixer control '3D Control Sigmatel - Depth',0 Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined Playback channels: Mono Limits: Playback 0 - 3 Mono: Playback 2 [67%] Simple mixer control '3D Control Sigmatel - Rear Depth',0 Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined Playback channels: Mono Limits: Playback 0 - 3 Mono: Playback 2 [67%] seem 5880b can copy front to rear Simple mixer control 'AC97 2ch->4ch Copy',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Mono: Playback [off] Simple mixer control 'External Amplifier',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Mono: Playback [off] stac9708 also capable of copy front to rear Simple mixer control 'Sigmatel 4-Speaker Stereo',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Mono: Playback [off] Simple mixer control 'Sigmatel Output Bias',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Mono: Playback [off] Simple mixer control 'Sigmatel Surround',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 31 Mono: Front Left: Playback 28 [90%] [-4.50dB] [off] Front Right: Playback 28 [90%] [-4.50dB] [off] sigmatel surround is front/rear fader
APLAY **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: AudioPCI [Ensoniq AudioPCI], device 0: ES1371/1 [ES1371 DAC2/ADC] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 0: AudioPCI [Ensoniq AudioPCI], device 1: ES1371/2 [ES1371 DAC1] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 device 1 is rear device , you need to use surround40 for 4 channels http://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-lib.git;a=blob;f=src/conf/cards/ENS1371.conf;hb=HEAD
Thanks much for the responses. However, I do not understand what I am to do to fix my problem. Please clarify. Thanks again.
use alsamixer to switch off 3D Sound your sound blaster pci 128 support up to 4 channels you can play audio through black jack using rear device speaker-test -D rear -c2 -t wav you can play audio through green jack using front device speaker-test -D front -c 2 -t wav speaker-test -D suuround40 -t wav
I muted all 3D options and now everything sounds much better. I still can't understand how the 3D works to override the separate channels and put them into the front stereo channels. In any case, thank you very much for the explanation and help.
Thanks for the feedback, I'll close this bug since your issue was resolved.
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