[SOLVED] How do I enable stereo upmixing?

[bradleypariah]

Hello. System specs at the bottom of the post. Title says it all. I want stereo sources to upmix to surround-sound.

In Ubuntu Gnome, if I listened to music through Kodi, stereo sources would upmix to 5.1, and low frequencies would output via the subwoofer.
Now using Kubuntu, I remembered to edit pulse-daemon.conf, and I enabled lfe-remixing, and set my crossover to 120 Hz, rebooted, but there's no audio ever coming out the sub.

In Plasma's sound settings, I have my output set to 5.1 with stereo input duplex, and I also tried just 5.1. No change. Also - There's no "test output" buttons like there is in Gnome. You know, so you can hear the lady's voice say "Front. Center." "Front. Right." "Rear. Right."

etc. How do I do that in Plasma?
In Kodi's System Settings > Audio, I have my output set to 5.1.

Still no subwoofer.

I played a bit of Saint's Row 4, and there was no subwoofer there either, but there used to be when I gamed with Ubuntu Gnome.

It just dawned on me that I might need to install ALSA Mixer GUI and turn up the channel, but I'm at work, and I can't confirm. I don't know if ALSA Mixer GUI even works in Plasma. I will try it. Anybody have any other suggestions just in case?
Thanks in advance.

i7 2600s octa-thread 2.8 GHz
8GB DDR3 RAM
Creative Audigy FX
gtx680 4GB DDR5

[woodsmoke]

Hi
Interesting problem however, although I see your hardware specs you have not mentioned your OS.

That would probably help a bit in figuring things out.

On my system KDE Neon Developer stable it just so happens that I have the need of moving my hard drive from my "geewhiz largescreen television computer media center" to a rather pelebian piece of metal while I am working on "stuff".

The hardware for the gewhize machine is a "Turks/Whistler HDMI Audio [Radion HD 6000 Series] card.

On the more basic machine it is "audio out'.

When I have selected, on the older machine, to view the Audio Hardware Setup and have selected the "audio out", I, indeed, see only the two speakers and can hear the woman when testing.

However, when i select the Turks/Whistler I see

Front left, Front Center, Front right

Rear left, Subwhoofer, Rear right

When I test I hear nothing.

So, is it possible that it is such a simple situation as that you have left "another" card enabled, or is it possible that in some kind of update or whatever something was "reset" or did you possibly tick the "defaults" button and i somehow reset things to maybe the "onboard sound" which was previously disabled upon insertion of the sound card.

And, you have probably already gone through this but it is worth the asking.

And yes, depending on "things" installing ALSA Mixer Gui can sometimes be of help, I have used it often.

And, if you could, please come back with your OS so that someone much smarter than the old woodsmoke can offer some CLI magic!

woodlikessoundstuffsmoke

[bradleypariah]

I found it. I'm an idiot. I did, in fact, set enable-lfe-remixing to "yes", lfe-crossover-freq to "120," and default-sample-channels to "6" -- however, I left them all commented out! I deleted three semicolons, rebooted, and Bob's your uncle.

I'm listening to nice-sounding music as I type this. Thanks for chiming in.

[GreyGeek]

Ah, happy Penguins! Always a nice thing!

[woodsmoke]

Thank YOU for posting such an interesting thread!

And...don't be a stranger to the forum that is better than toast with premium jam...it is threads like these that make the place it is.

woodjustanoldhardwarekindaguysmoke

[vinnywright]

yes this is a nice bit of info (the "lfe" parts) it's nice to know .

I am assuming that it was /etc/pulse/daemon.conf that these edits were made to (uncommenting them) ?

wile I have been wandering for a wile now if the 5.1 , 7.1 options would work if I needed them I have only one box that dose have the outputs for 5.1 but it dose not mater as I have no speakers to plug into it , however .my box's feed through HDMI to the TV's side input and the main HDMI input of the TV is connected to a HK AVR in it's ARC (audio return channel) supported output . So with the ARC enabled on the TV any audio can be heard through the 7.1 100WT per channel AVR surround system that dose virtual surround if the audio is not in surround format my favorite of it's up mixed surround mods is called Harman NSP ,,,,,, the speakers I got for it are a 7.1 surround set from ONKYO rated at 130WT's each , and the subwoofer is 270WT self powered so thats 970 total WT's of crystal clear ear numbing power in a 12x17 room ...

VINNY

[bradleypariah]

I am assuming that it was /etc/pulse/daemon.conf that these edits were made to (uncommenting them) ?

Yep, sorry for not including that.

wile I have been wandering for a wile now if the 5.1 , 7.1 options would work if I needed them I have only one box that dose have the outputs for 5.1 but it dose not mater as I have no speakers to plug into it , however .my box's feed through HDMI to the TV's side input and the main HDMI input of the TV is connected to a HK AVR in it's ARC (audio return channel) supported output . So with the ARC enabled on the TV any audio can be heard through the 7.1 100WT per channel AVR surround system that dose virtual surround if the audio is not in surround format my favorite of it's up mixed surround mods is called Harman NSP ,,,,,, the speakers I got for it are a 7.1 surround set from ONKYO rated at 130WT's each , and the subwoofer is 270WT self powered so thats 970 total WT's of crystal clear ear numbing power in a 12x17 room ...

Sounds nice! Yeah, if you have daemon.conf configured correctly, it should work fine. We watched Netflix last night and it was true surround, not just up-mixed, but stereo music from Kodi gets upmixed.