SOLVED: 5.1 Surround Sound not working on ION Motherboard Sound Card

1st Official Post

    Hello everybody!

    I have just installed LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-7.0.2, which includes KODI 16.1. So far, everything is working fine except for the surround sound.

    This is my hardware setup:

    - IONITX F-E Motherboard
    - Creative Inspire P5800 5.1 Speakers

    I extract video through the HDMI port of the motherboard (everything working fine on this side). For the audio, I'm using the analog 3.5 mm conectors of the integrated motherboard audio card, plugging them into the speaker's subwoofer. I mean the classic three-color 3.5mm mini-jack audio cables, like this:

    The thing is, no matter the configuration options I choose, I only obtain stereo sound (rear speakers don't work). Prior to installing LibreELEC, I tried with OpenELEC (same problem). And prior to that, I was using Windows XP on the same hardware and surround sound was working fine, so I suppose this is a driver / software issue. Could you give some guidance on how to fix it?

    Thank you very much,

    Edited once, last by Zalander (November 30, 2016 at 9:17 AM).

    Quote from chewitt
    Code
    echo "options snd-hda-intel model=3stack-6ch-dig" > /storage/.config/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

    ^^ Google guess based on [SOLVED] Nvidia ION 5.1 audio jacks only giving stereo

    Nice guess! Following that post I got it working, this is what I have done:

    1) I enabled SSH and accessed the system.

    2) I executed the following command on the Terminal to create a configuration file:

    Code
    nano /etc/modprobe.d/surround.conf

    3) I added this line to the recently created file:

    Code
    options snd-hda-intel model=3stack-6ch-dig

    4) I exited saving changes. Then I browsed through Kodi settings to install the "Multimedia Tools" Add-on.

    5) After installing that addon, I went back to the terminal through SSH and executed alsamixer

    6) In Alsamixer, I changed the setting from "2ch" to "6ch" here:

    This way, you could test if surround sound works (in my case, it worked).

    7) And finally, to save the configuration changes made in Alsamixer, I executed this line of code in Terminal:

    Code
    echo "amixer sset 'Channel Mode' '6ch'" >> /storage/.config/autostart.sh

    Edited once, last by Zalander (November 30, 2016 at 9:12 AM).