WARNING: This method is a bit hackish and more likely to cause problems than the officially sanctioned 'easy way'. Or pretty much anything else that isn't listed in the easy method above. You will need to use this method if you have one of the following speaker configurations: If you have a surround sound setup not listed here, you need to do it the hard way. Now restart pulseaudio (easiest way is to restart ubuntu) and bingo, surround sound should be perfectly working. Uncomment the default-sample-channels line (remove the symbol) and change the number to however many channels you have. Scroll through until you find the lines that say: If you have some other combination, skip to the next section. If you have one of the following combinations of speakers, you are in luck, you can do it the easy way. If you have already modified the config files in ~/.pulse, you don't need to do this, it will erase your modified user settings.Ĭp /etc/pulse/nf /etc/pulse/default.pa -t ~/.pulse/ It is probably VERY EASY to get surround sound working just by changing one config option.įirst copy the system config files to your home directory, we want to change these settings on a per user basis. The above is important to note before you go messing up your asoundrc or anything like that. A good rule of thumb is, if it works in windows, you have the right hardware and all the plugs are in the right places.įirst things first: PULSEAUDIO DEFAULTS TO ONLY TWO CHANNELS!

Following the guide in this case is probably quite a bad idea. If you have a standard 2.1 setup, it will in 99% of cases only have one 3.5mm jack and will appear to the computer as 2.0 speakers. This guide assumes you actually have surround sound speakers :-) and have them all plugged into the appropriate sockets on the sound card. To restore these, skip to the end of the guide. If you somehow mess up your sound following this guide, don't worry, if you followed my commands you will have taken backups. I have an m-audio revolution 7.1 sound card and after struggling for a while to get surround sound, I thought that now I've succeeded it would be a good idea to post my experiences here. It does not suggest editing system-wide configuration files any more, and HAL based auto-detection should still work even if you do it the 'hard way'. Note: This guide has undergone a major revision. There is NO NEED to use this guide at all any more! Configuring surround sound is now ridiculously easy in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) - just go into the hardware tab in sound preferences, click the device to configure, then select a surround sound profile from the drop down box. This guide is now OUTDATED and no longer necessary.

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