Weird Sound: Speaker switching on their own

[Arrakaij]

Hello,

i'm pretty helpless. I don't even know, if my problem is driver, alsa or pulseaudio-related

Setup:
RaspPi rev.B
Conrad AA 1570 7.1 SoundBox (USB, rPI verified, working fine on windows)
Logitech 7.1 Sound system (correctly plugged in)
the ArchLinux version linked on raspberrypi.org (updated. PA)

Problem:
I start playing a stereo wav via PA (paplay --channel-map=front-left,front-right testsound.wav, to be sure) the sound plays on two speakers. after a time (5-30 seconds) the playback switches to other speakers, and so forth. the soundfile is about 4minutes long and played once.
this happens with all inputs. rtp, native-tcp, native-unix

It switches between front, side, rear, and front-center/lfe. (left-right on those, it does not mix it like front-left,rear-right)

i looked and googled into that topic quite a time, bot did not see anyone with the same problems.

speaker-test -c8 -D surround71 is playing sounds correct.

alsa is unconfigured, asound.conf empty
i ended with a very minimalistic configuration of pulseaudio, however the problem showed up with the standard configuration, too
i start pa as user.

default.pa
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'load-module module-alsa-sink sink_name=surround71 sink_properties=device.description=Surround7.1 device=surround71 channels=8 rate=44100 channel_map=front-left,front-right,side-left,side-right,rear-left,rear-right,front-center,lfe

load-module module-native-protocol-unix')

daemon.conf
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
exit-idle-time=20
resample-method = ffmpeg
enable-remixing = no
enable-lfe-remixing = no
flat-volumes = no
default-sample-rate = 44100
default-sample-channels = 8
')

here a output of pulseaudio -v, it switched speakers 3 times duing that
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup complete.
I: [pulseaudio] client.c: Created 0 "Native client (UNIX socket client)"
I: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Got credentials: uid=1000 gid=100 success=1
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: Trying to change sample rate
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: Rate changed to 44100 Hz
I: [pulseaudio] resampler.c: Forcing resampler 'copy', because of fixed, identical sample rates.
I: [pulseaudio] remap.c: Using generic matrix remapping
I: [pulseaudio] resampler.c: Using resampler 'copy'
I: [pulseaudio] resampler.c: Using s16le as working format.
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: Created input 0 "HugeWAV.wav" on surround71 with sample spec s16le 2ch 44100Hz and channel map front-left,front-right
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: media.format = "WAV (Microsoft)"
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: application.name = "paplay"
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: media.name = "HugeWAV.wav"
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: native-protocol.peer = "UNIX socket client"
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: native-protocol.version = "28"
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: application.process.id = "471"
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: application.process.user = "arrakaij"
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: application.process.host = "alarmpi"
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: application.process.binary = "pacat"
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: application.language = "C"
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: application.process.machine_id = "5d80d3859dd94f7c80e07a21f97e198d"
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: application.process.session_id = "c2"
I: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Requested tlength=2000.00 ms, minreq=20.00 ms
I: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Final latency 3486.08 ms = 1960.00 ms + 2*20.00 ms + 1486.08 ms
I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: Freeing input 0 "HugeWAV.wav"
I: [pulseaudio] client.c: Freed 0 "paplay"
')

[sdjf]

I don't have stereo experience but I could not control where my pi sent sound without some configuration file. I use .asoundrc, check into that.

Also check into alsa-utils and alsa-tools to see if any will help if you do not already have them installed.

If there is a verbose option in the player you are using, I would turn that on so you can see what is going on

Another thing to try, is to start your player with strace. That will show you what files your player is looking for and may not have found, if there are any. Long output, but another way to go. I save strace output to a file instead of straight to console.