Surrond sound possiable?

[theloon]

tried the settings as posted earlier but now when I run pulseaudio -D I get:
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup failed.

Tried running pulseaudio -D before the changes and it brought up the GUI but sadly not now.

[ktb]

So, ignoring PulseAudio for now (I disabled it), I installed the Squeezelite version 1.8 Debian package using APT in Raspbian Stretch (a package for Squeezelite version 1.6.4 is available in Raspbian Jessie, but I haven't tried it).

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sudo apt install squeezelite

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pi@raspberrypi:~ $ apt-cache policy squeezelite
squeezelite:
  Installed: 1.8-4
  Candidate: 1.8-4
  Version table:
 *** 1.8-4 600
        600 http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian stretch/main armhf Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.6.4-1+b1 500
        500 http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian jessie/main armhf Packages

I have no squeezelite_settings.sh, so I suppose you installed it some other way (from source?). In my case, it's configured through /etc/default/squeezelite:

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pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cat /etc/default/squeezelite
# Defaults for squeezelite initscript
# sourced by /etc/init.d/squeezelite
# installed at /etc/default/squeezelite by the maintainer scripts

# The name for the squeezelite player:
SL_NAME="$(hostname -s)"

# ALSA output device:
#SL_SOUNDCARD="default:CARD=Set"
SL_SOUNDCARD="anyChannelCount"

# Squeezebox server (Logitech Media Server):
# Uncomment the next line if you want to point squeezelite at the IP address of
# your squeezebox server. This is usually unnecessary as the server is
# automatically discovered.
#SB_SERVER_IP="192.168.x.y"

# Additional options to pass to squeezelite:
# Please do not include -z to make squeezelite daemonise itself.
#SB_EXTRA_ARGS=""

Apparently, Squeezelite runs as root:

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pi@raspberrypi:~ $ ps aux | grep squeezelite
root      6204  3.6  9.8  97196 88300 ?        SLl  03:56   0:13 /usr/bin/squeezelite -n raspberrypi -o anyChannelCount
pi        6452  0.0  0.0   4376   540 pts/0    S+   04:03   0:00 grep --color=auto squeezelite

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pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo systemctl status squeezelite
● squeezelite.service - LSB: Lightweight headless Squeezebox emulator
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/squeezelite; generated; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2017-05-29 03:56:49 CDT; 2s ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
  Process: 6187 ExecStop=/etc/init.d/squeezelite stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 6195 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/squeezelite start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   CGroup: /system.slice/squeezelite.service
           └─6204 /usr/bin/squeezelite -n raspberrypi -o anyChannelCount

May 29 03:56:49 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Lightweight headless Squeezebox emulator...
May 29 03:56:49 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started LSB: Lightweight headless Squeezebox emulator.

So, you would probably want to configure a system-wide ALSA config at /etc/asound.conf or create a .asoundrc file for the root user at /root/.asoundrc. If you have already created a ~/.asoundrc file for the pi user, then you can simply copy it to the system-wide location:

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pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo cp ~/.asoundrc /etc/asound.conf

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pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cat /etc/asound.conf
pcm.!default {
#       type hw
#       card 0
        type plug
        slave.pcm "anyChannelCount"
}

ctl.!default {
        type hw
        card 0
}

pcm.anyChannelCount {
    type route
    slave.pcm "hw:0"
    slave.channels 8;
    ttable {
           0.0 1
           1.1 1
           2.2 1
           3.3 1
           4.4 1
           5.5 1
           6.6 1
           7.7 1
    }
}

ctl.anyChannelCount {
    type hw;
    card 0;
}

Then I installed the latest nightly package of Logitech Media Server from http://downloads.slimdevices.com/:

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pi@raspberrypi:~/Downloads $ sudo dpkg -i logitechmediaserver_7.9.1~1495659078_arm.deb
Selecting previously unselected package logitechmediaserver.
(Reading database ... 316444 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack logitechmediaserver_7.9.1~1495659078_arm.deb ...
Unpacking logitechmediaserver (7.9.1~1495659078) ...
Setting up logitechmediaserver (7.9.1~1495659078) ...
Adding system user `squeezeboxserver' (UID 121) ...
Adding new user `squeezeboxserver' (UID 121) with group `nogroup' ...
Not creating home directory `/usr/share/squeezeboxserver'.
Processing triggers for systemd (232-23) ...

I had to jump through some hoops including rebuilding all the included perl CPAN modules to get it to work with Perl 5.24 from Raspbian Stretch. Then I setup LMS through the web interface.

I then installed JiveLite from https://github.com/ralph-irving/triode-jivelite.

After all that, it seemed to work OK for me in general.

I also re-enabled PulseAudio and tried the "default" device name instead of "anyChannelCount" which should be "Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server." That appears to work fine.

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pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo systemctl status squeezelite
● squeezelite.service - LSB: Lightweight headless Squeezebox emulator
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/squeezelite; generated; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2017-05-29 04:53:12 CDT; 10min ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
  Process: 8185 ExecStop=/etc/init.d/squeezelite stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 8269 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/squeezelite start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   CGroup: /system.slice/squeezelite.service
           └─8278 /usr/bin/squeezelite -n raspberrypi -o default

May 29 04:53:12 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Lightweight headless Squeezebox emulator...
May 29 04:53:12 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started LSB: Lightweight headless Squeezebox emulator.

Now I could be wrong about this, but the big problem seems to be that this software (much like shairplay/shairport/shairport-sync) doesn't support anything more than 2-channel stereo sound. Honestly, have you seen any evidence of anybody getting more than 2-channel playback when using LMS, Squeezelite and JiveLite? I've seen plenty of examples of using it for multi-room stereo playback, but not true surround sound. Then I found this thread -- http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthrea ... -and-music. That seems to confirm my suspicion.

So, I wonder exactly what you're looking to do. Are you looking to play something like WAV/FLAC/ALAC/MP3-Surround/M2TS files which are actually mixed in 4.0, 5.1 or 7.1 or are you looking to duplicate (upmix) 2-channel stereo recordings on the four channels of your amplifier? It wouldn't actually be true surround sound, but I do believe the latter can be accomplished directly through ALSA configuration.

With that said, I will try to play some 5.1 WAV, FLAC and M2TS recordings with a variety of software (even LMS+Squeezelite+JiveLite) to see if surround sound works with the Octo.