How to make the internal subwoofer work on an Asus G73JW?

It is very unlikely that a bug was fixed a year ago, was provided with up-to-date drivers from the ubuntu-audio-dev ppa, but did not make it for the release in 12.04. LTS.

Therefore I suggest you first have a look whether your /etc/pulse/daemon.conf is set to enable 2.1 sound. There should be the following entries:

default-sample-channels = 3
enable-lfe-remixing = yes

Try if that helps you to get sound to your subwoofer before you take efforts to intall possibly unstable new drivers.

At present there are no newer drivers than those installed by 12.04 available from the audio-dev-ppa (1.0.25+dsfg-0ubuntu1). This may change however in the near future. According to the release notes for ALSA drivers custom kernel modules need to be built from source:

A custom alsa-modules package can be built from the sources in the alsa-source package using the m-a utility (included in the module-assistant package). ^{release note for alsa-base}

After trying the changes on /etc/pulse/daemon.conf without success, I added to etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf this line at the end:

options snd-hda-intel model=asus-mode4

Now it's working perfectly!

Oooh, Hello every one, I have other asus with the subwoofer, and I was thinking how this work, because with the new versions of pulseaudio don't run very good, and with that config only for me plays the right with the subwoofer, for repair this is very simple, first:

in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf change the line

; enable-lfe-remixing = yes

with

enable-lfe-remixing = yes

in /etc/pulse/client.conf change the line

; autospawn = no

with

autospawn = no

next in the etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf or etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf add this line in the end:

options snd-hda-intel model=XXXX

where XXXX can be asus-mode1, asus-mode2, ... asus-mode8

depending nootebook is one of thats, and, how we choose one?

first in this topic is recommend add in the /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/profile-sets/extra-hdmi.conf

[Mapping analog-surround-21]
device-strings = surround40:%f
channel-map = front-left,front-right,lfe,lfe
paths-output = analog-output analog-output-speaker
priority = 7
direction = out

(depending of the kernel you must change the last line for direction = output, at least in the kernel 3.8.0-30 you must do) but in my Asus R401V8 that don't works fine, but we will use this profile for tests and this line in the terminal (don't run this as root)

pulseaudio -k && modprobe -r snd-hda-intel && modprobe snd-hda-intel model=asus-modeX && pulseaudio --start

if the pulseaudio is shutdown this line will pass a message error, before of execute use pulseaudio --start and you don't run jack for this and close all the players, next, we will replace the X with the modes 1 to 8 for test:

pulseaudio -k && modprobe -r snd-hda-intel && modprobe snd-hda-intel model=asus-mode1 && pulseaudio --start

and we will check the sound setting, first, first we must check if is available the Analog Surround 2.1 in the profiles (plase select the speaker card of the computer), if not, we close the windows, execute the line with the next asus mode, and check the profile again, if exist the profile we will test the speakers, and the subwoofer must sound, you must see 3 options in the speakers test, the left, right, and subwoofer, all most play something, okey, in my case works with asus-mode5, but with the before configuration of audio profile, the subwoofer only play the sound of right speaker, I use this profile:

[Mapping analog-surround-21]
device-strings = front:%f hw:%f
channel-map = left,right,lfe,lfe
paths-output = analog-output analog-output-lineout analog-output-speaker analog-    output-desktop-speaker analog-output-headphones analog-output-headphones-2
paths-input = analog-input-front-mic analog-input-rear-mic analog-input-internal-mic   analog-input-dock-mic analog-input analog-input-mic analog-input-linein analog-input-aux    analog-input-video analog-input-tvtuner analog-input-fm analog-input-mic-line analog-    input-headphone-mic analog-input-headset-mic

Is the same as the analog-stereo but with the lfe,lfe in the channel map, and works fine for me, you can test something how this:

[Mapping analog-surround-21]
device-strings = surround40:%f
channel-map = left,right,lfe,lfe
paths-output = analog-output analog-output-speaker
priority = 7

make little changes, for check the speakers you most play a audio file, music with bass ideally for listen and check.

This method works in: Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, Gentoo, basically, the distributions with alsa and pulseaudio.

Good Bye, Sorry for my bad english.

I still needed to add a 2.1 surround system by adding the following lines to /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/profile-sets/extra-hdmi.conf:

[Mapping analog-surround-21]
device-strings = surround40:%f
channel-map = front-left,front-right,lfe,lfe
paths-output = analog-output analog-output-speaker
priority = 7
direction = out

After that there was an additional mode "Analogue Surround 2.1 Output" in the sound settings which lets me control the subwoofer. See more detailed instructions here. This worked on Asus N76VM running Ubuntu 12.10 with resulting in excellent sound quality.