Wolfson DAC through rear channel of AV710 w/ ALSA

powderific · n00b Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Posts: 26

The Chaintech AV710 apparently has some a very nice Wolfson DAC on the rear channel, making it great for music. Following the instructions in this thread http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1534036#post1534036 (I posted in that thread but it doesn't seem to get much traffic so I'm posting here too) I think I have alsamixer set up correctly. Yet, I can't seem to get any sound to come out of the rear output. The regular line out works so I know that the card is funtional.

I've been using KDE 3.4 with amarok and -arts in my USE section. ALSA 1.09b is built into my kernel (2.6.12nitro5) and it recognizes my soundcard as the first device. Is there any way I can tell it to play to the rear channel? Thanks for any help![/url]

powderific · n00b Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Posts: 26

Nobody? Can anyone even tell me how one normally gets music and whatnot to play over surround sound?

weedy · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jun 2005 Posts: 247

get this http://www.vandemar.org/asound.state cp over /etc/asound.state then run "alsactl restore" remember its the last plug before the optical out.

powderific · n00b Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Posts: 26

All that does is set the volume and whatnot correctly, which I had. Never did get it to work so I wound up buying an M-Audio Delta 410, which worked perfectly out of the box (and honestly is a much better card to begin with). Gave the AV710 to a friend who was building a new Windows computer.

Didn't know whether to put (SOLVED) on this one since it wasn't really resolved but I moved on to something else.

weedy · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jun 2005 Posts: 247

well for me after doing that the center/bass output was a little lounder and sounded MUCH better then the line out, so i think its working. eather way it's infinitly times better then my onboard and for $30 im not going to complain. if it doesn't work in the windows comp you have a bum card.

powderific · n00b Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Posts: 26

For mine it never put any sound out of the other ports at all (even with the asound.state and a LOT of time spent troubleshooting). I don't know what it was about my setup but it just never worked quite right. The card has been working quite well for my friend's windows computer, so I guess it all worked out. (Not bashing the card or anything, just didn't work out for me. It is a fantastic deal)

darklegion · Guru Joined: 14 Nov 2004 Posts: 468

I've got to work properly, but it only works on alsa versions older then 1.0.11.So you need to use an older kernel for it to work i.e 2.6.16 or older.Anyone know what needs to be fixed in the asound.state to get it working again?
Here is another head-fi thread with discussion about the problem, but no fix:
http://www5.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=142981