Surround sound (quadraphonic) via OpenAL, ALSA and SBLive!?

From: Keenan Clay Wilkie (darkstar_at_shell1.iglou.com)
Date: 03/01/04

  • Next message: Alan Connor: "Re: need bash mail syntax help" 
    Date: 1 Mar 2004 01:50:40 -0500

    I've been informed that it is possible to get proper surround sound, such
    as quadraphonic sound on sound cards that support rear speaker setups,
    using a combination of ALSA and openal. I'm not a programmer, so I'm not
    interested in development. I'm interested in taking advantage of this
    feature where it's available, such as games that use openal.
    Unfortunately, thus far I've not had any luck making things work. I'm
    using ALSA modules for the emu10k1 driver (loaded as modules) for my Sound
    Blaster Live! card, and I have four speakers connected. I can adjust the
    volume for the front and rear speakers independently. I have openal, I
    have a special modified openal library from
    http://students.imsa.edu/~jrockway/ (supposedly this provides better
    surround quality). Unfortunately, I'm not detecting any actual surround
    sound output. It seems as though it's outputting in two-channel stereo
    instead, just putting the right and left channels in the respective front
    and rear speakers.

    A little bit of listen-testing has led me to believe (though I am not
    certain, because I can't get any openal demos to work -- the sample ones
    provided with the source code won't compile for some reason) that the
    driver is trying to output surround sound, but for some reason it's
    putting the sounds for the front speakers into both the front and rear
    channels, and the sounds for the rear speakers are just getting lost. I
    noticed in Unreal Tournament 2004 (a game that supposedly supprots
    openal), sounds for objects in front of me were audible, but if I turned
    around, they got very quiet, like the channel on which the sound was to be
    put out wasn't available. Again, I've no demo or test software, so I
    can't say for certain.

    If anyone knows of proper mixer settings (either with KDE's mixer or the
    console-based alsamixer), I'd love to try them out. I'd also not mind
    being pointed to WORKING openal test/demo programs. 

    -- 
 See the documented lies of Pastor Frank: http://tinyurl.com/6009
 Christopher Byron (cbyron@nypost.com) thinks that a video game is 
 "10,000 times worse" than child molestation: http://tinyurl.com/37j8f
          d a r k s t a r @ i g l o u . c o m  |  atheist #29
  • Next message: Alan Connor: "Re: need bash mail syntax help"

    Relevant Pages

    • Re: How do i hook up the 4 4 ohm interior speakers to a 2 ohm total 4 channel amplifier?? Help plea
      ... Rear speakers being louder would be fine if your ears were pasted on ... The pinna attenuate high frequencies. ... is greater than with sound coming from behind you. ...
      (rec.audio.car)
    • Re: kicker ks69
      ... also i dont believe the bs about yur rear speakers are a waste.it all ... blends to make the overall sound of your car. ... Why on earth would you put more power to your rear speakers than to you ... car should be to have sound coming from in FRONT of you as well. ...
      (rec.audio.car)
    • Re: W reg PUG 306 HDi D-turbo
      ... Can anybody please tell me which wires are +ve and -ve for both the ... left and the right rear speakers? ... set the balance controls on the radio so that all the sound is only coming ... set the front/rear fader to rear only - sound only from one speaker now ...
      (uk.rec.cars.maintenance)
    • Re: Dolby Surround carried on Freeview?
      ... sound, but do you know if the 2 channels use Dolby or similar to ... compatible with Dolby Surround", in practice this never seemed to be the ... I quite often notice that a musical backtrack gets steered to the rear speakers. ...
      (uk.tech.digital-tv)
    • Re: Sound problem
      ... surround sound system in the computer room. ... set it up for 6 ch sound and ran the diagnostic gizmo in Asus's ... I get sound from the rear speakers also but at a low volume. ...
      (alt.games.warcraft)
    Loading