Score:1

Ubuntu

How to configure 7.1 Surround Sound USB Headset?

dschoni

5/15/24, 3:29 PM

I'm the owner of a Roccat Khan Aimo headset, which has a built-in 7.1 Soundcard.
It's not a virtual device!
Unfortunately since I've changed to Linux, it's just only stereo. There are no 7.1 options listed in the settings.

Using "aplay -L" shows, that the hardware really is present:

hw:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    Direct hardware device without any conversions
plughw:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    Hardware device with all software conversions
sysdefault:CARD=AIMO
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    Front output / input
surround21:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    2.1 Surround output to Front and Subwoofer speakers
surround40:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
dmix:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    Direct sample mixing device
usbstream:CARD=AIMO
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO
    USB Stream Output

How can I configure my system, to show it up in the sound configuration?

My system:

Operating System: Ubuntu Studio 22.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.7
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.92.0
Qt Version: 5.15.3
Kernel Version: 5.19.0-1023-lowlatency (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 16 × 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-13700K
Memory: 62.6 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: llvmpipe

About the microphone:

"arecord -L" gives the following output:

hw:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    Direct hardware device without any conversions
plughw:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    Hardware device with all software conversions
sysdefault:CARD=AIMO
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    Front output / input
dsnoop:CARD=AIMO,DEV=0
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO, USB Audio
    Direct sample snooping device
usbstream:CARD=AIMO
    ROCCAT Khan AIMO
    USB Stream Output

283

1 + 9

configuration

usb

alsa

ubuntu-studio

soundcard

Nmath

5/15/24, 4:32 PM

According to the product website, software support is only made available for Windows so it appears that the manufacturer does not support all of the product's features on other operating systems: https://www.roccat.com/products/elo-7-1-usb And yes they do in fact say that the surround sound is "virtual" and show diagrams of the device with only one driver per cup.

dschoni

5/17/24, 8:58 PM

@Nmath The fact, that "aplay -L" shows the interface, means that it must be there. The manufacturer states, that the headphones are equipped with an own USB soundcard. So it must be possible to use it, like HDMI 7.1 or an onboard soundcard. By the way: my onboard soundcard also has 7.1 channels, but in the sound settings only 5.1 is available ...

dschoni

5/17/24, 9:00 PM

@Nmath On windows the 7.1 Sound is working. I can hear the sound coming from the directions, where test-tools tells me, that it comes from.

dschoni

5/17/24, 9:03 PM

@Nmath It doesn't matter, wether there is only 1 drive per ear and wether the sound is virtual or not. We also have 1 ear per side of the head, so it makes no difference. What's important is, that the audio channels in the interface are present, to allow the virtualization of the sound, without additional virtualization software. The virtualization will then be done by the hardware.

Nmath

5/17/24, 10:41 PM

Yes that's a good point that hardware channels are being detected so that should allow hardware-based virtualization assuming it doesn't need assistance from software or a driver. I would not expect to see a USB headphone output as "Digital Audio (S/PDIF)". And the microphone is coming up as analog. Is the headphone connected only by USB or is there also a 3.5mm jack? It's possible that a lead for more research is configuring a headset (headphone+mic all-in-one)

dschoni

5/19/24, 12:46 PM

@Nmath It's a full USB device, without 3.5mm jack. So the microphone is controlled by the internal soundcard too and it is muted, when turned up - this works fine. There is also a volume wheel, which works fine on Linux. There is also a button to switch between stereo and surround sound and the LED lightning, which both can't be controlled on Linux.

dschoni

5/19/24, 2:34 PM

It must be an ALSA configuration problem or a system incompatibiliy.

dschoni

5/19/24, 2:42 PM

If I stop pulseaudio.service, I can use speaker-test, even for the channels of the soundcard, which are not listed in the sound settings. It works for all 8 channels. On the headphone only 2 channels are working. using the surroundxx options leads to error messages "No valid arguments" (ungültige Konfiguration: keine unterstützte Konfiguration: Das Argument ist ungültig Fehler beim Setzen der Hardware-Parameter: Das Argument ist ungültig). It looks like the supplemental channels will be recognized, but can't be initialized.

dschoni

5/19/24, 8:36 PM

@Nmath Thanks for pushing me with my nose onto the facts ;) and for your patience.

Score:0

Ubuntu

dschoni

5/19/24, 8:35 PM

The referenced "Roccat Khan Aimo" headset uses a Cmedia CM6533X1 chip as soundcard. According to it's datasheet, there are really only 2 channels for output available. The virtual sound is then created by the "Xear" effects driver on the Windows side. It's not clear, why the device lists several configurations including surround21 ... surround71 under Linux. Maybe these are required to allow a proper connection by the use of the "Xear" drivers under Windows, but are not working on Linux.

As conclusion I have to say, that a direct hardware access to this headphones 2.1 ... 7.1 channels is not possible, because these don't really exist.

Only in combination with drivers, which are not available in Linux, it turns to a real 7.1 system. So I had wrong informations about that.

The only alternative as I know, is the use of pipewire, like described in https://kaeru.my/notes/pipewire-surround-headphones .

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