I have a frontend setup that works well except that I can only get mono audio from it. I have an ASUS A7N8X-X mobo with a headphone jack to composite audio cable that runs to the tv. I have changed the alsamixer settings like unmuting surround and turning up the volume. But still no stereo sound. Also when I reboot the computer the alsamixer settings go back to default settings. Any ideas?

The mono thing really sounds like the cable (I'm almost certain).

The mixer settings are a permission problem and this is mentioned extensively in the forum so you should have a look.

Cheers

Mike

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LinHES 7.4
Australian Dragon
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I tested the cable by plugging it into my ipod, in this configuration the ipod music was playing through both speakers of my tv. I plug the same cable back into the frontend and its back to mono.

I will look into the permissions for alsamixer. But even when I did change the alsamixer settings which held until resart, it was still mono audio.

Wouldn't the next probable suspect in the list be the audio jack then? It could be that one of the little blades that make contact with the three parts of the mini-phono jack isn't actually touching. That board has six channels. Probably by default configured for speakers, headphones (ie font pannel) and line out, etc. You could try the Line Out jack instead of the Headphone jack.

Have you checked the recordings to ensure they are in stereo. Take one over to a different machine (via lan, dvd, usb stick . . .) and make sure the card is recording in stereo.

While on that thought, what tuner card are you using. I've seen some low end sofware capture cards that were mono only.

Additionally your term "composite audio cable" is confusing to me. What exactly do you mean by that.

You may want to try running

to see if that fixes your mono problem.

In any case, after you make your changes and exit alsamixer
type:

to make your changes "stick"

You could also try the speaker-test command, I don't have the command right in front of me, but a quick search should reveal the command line.

Also I think you should be using the line out jack as well.

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Girkers

After a lot of frustrating troubleshooting it turns out that the onboard sound was fragged. I put in a PCI sound card and it works perfectly now.