Splitting front and rear outputs .asoundrc

From the ALSA wiki

Splitting front and rear outputs

I had a lot of trouble first figuring out how I could split front and rear channels into two devices that could be used independently. The following .asoundrc file is what I came up with. It can be used with mplayer for example as follows:

mplayer -ao alsa1x:frontx file1.avi
mplayer -ao alsa1x:rearx file2.mp3

Enjoy...

pcm.dshare {
    type dmix
    ipc_key 2048
    slave {
        pcm "hw:0"
        rate 44100
        period_time 0
        period_size 1024
        buffer_size 8192
        channels 4
    }
    bindings {
        0 0
        1 1
        2 2
        3 3
    }
}
pcm.frontx {
    type plug
    slave {
        pcm "dshare"
        channels 4
    }
    ttable.0.0 1
    ttable.1.1 1
}
pcm.rearx {
    type plug
    slave {
        pcm "dshare"
        channels 4
    }
    ttable.0.2 1
    ttable.1.3 1
}

Note, for ttable you might use fractions but then you cannot use LC_NUMERIC locales that use characters other than '.' as decimal separator. Actually this is a bug and has already been fixed in versions higher than 1.0.8.

With this setup, playing a mono file only produces sound in the left channel, is there any way to make mono files automatically go to both speakers? //Mikachu

To automatically upmix mono to stereo, you need to add another layer:

pcm.rearx {
   type plug
   slave {
       pcm {
           type plug
           slave {
               pcm "dshare"
               channels 4
           }
           ttable.0.2 1
           ttable.1.3 1
       }
       channels 4
   }
   route_policy default #This upmixes mono to stereo
}

//Jmkinny

Retrieved from "http://alsa.opensrc.org/Splitting_front_and_rear_outputs_.asoundrc"

Category: Howto

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