No LFE channel (subwoofer) in Ubuntu.

[satsun]

I did make sure all libs were correct and symlinked. Same result.

I've come to the conclusion that this is either a lack of a feature in OpenAL or OpenAL games just not being properly told to utilize the LFE channel. I booted to Windows, disabled any bass redirection features and no OpenAL games sent bass to the subwoofer while FMOD, XAudio, and DirectSound seemed to be using the LFE in some games. It was probably dependent on how the games were told to direct the audio by the programmers.

In Windows 7, if you tell it that your speakers (in speaker configuration) aren't full-range speakers then it will direct lower frequencies to the subwoofer channel; for this test I told it that my speakers were full-range so Windows OS doesn't redirect bass to the subwoofer, it leaves that up to the application. Creative's driver software also has a bass redirection option but this rarely works properly; I disabled it as well for this test.

With all bass redirection disabled, I tested 11 games of which 6 actually used the LFE channel properly. Super Street Fighter 4 AE and Resident Evil 5 seem to use Directsound and used the LFE. Crysis, Deus Ex HR, and Batman AA used FMOD and used LFE properly. RAGE uses XAudio and it worked properly with LFE also. I tried Amnesia, Unreal Tournament 3, and DOOM 3 and had no LFE from those OpenAL games.

I'll dig around to find out if I can work out bass redirection through ALSA.