If you have an sblive (emu10k) card with 5.1 surround (non digital) working I would be GRATEFUL if you could share your mixer settings for alsa (alsamixer).

I've tried every combination I can think of and there is always a channel missing (sometimes center...sometimes right) and the names on the slider don't seem to coincide with what you'd expect. I've looked all over the web and it seems this is a fairly common problem.

thanks ahead of time!

-Doug

Well I am not an expert so I cannot say that this will solve your problem. However, I also had problems getting my SB Live! to work that drove me nuts. Then I found out that the SB Live Analog/Digital Output Jack in ALSA Mixer had to be muted. I did that and everything worked beautifully. I am not quite sure of that switches purpose when we cannot use it, but maybe it is only to be used when we actually have a digital connection. Beats me!! Well I hope your problem was the same as mine. Good luck.

Hi!

Here my mixer settings:

Master: 77
Headphone LFE 1: off
Headphone 1: 0
Headphone Center 1: off
Tone: off
Bass: 50
Treble: 50
3D Control - Switch: on
3D Control Sigmatel - Depth: 67
3D Control Sigmatel - Rear Depth: 67
PCM: 81
Surround: 78
Center: 74
LFE: 78
Wave: 100
Wave Center: 78
Wave LFE: 78
Wave Surround: 78
Music: 100
Line: 74
Line LiveDrive: 0
Line2 LiveDrive 1: 0
CD: 90
Mic: off
Mic Boost: off
Video: off
Phone: off
IEC958*: off
PC Speaker: off
Aux: 74
AC97: 100
EMU10K1*: default; some at 100, same at minimum levels
Everything else: 0

You could not have EMU10K1* items because I found some no-name EMU10K1 driver and I don't remember from where I downloaded it. But maybe even without this, all channels should work. It is important not to set everything to 100 because ALSA software isn't perfect and high volume makes sound "wheezing". Definitely hardware amplifies sound better.

just run as root
#alsamixer
Configure bars and points with arrows amd -m- key press F1 for help
when done
#alsactl store

Actually it does sound somewhat similar. From what I can tell, if certain mixer levels are NOT muted then others will not work. I have not actually had a chance to try them out yet (I got so frustrated the other day I ended up blasting FC3, cursing it a couple of times in the process!).

I ALMOST got it running on FC3 before blasting it...but what broke the camel's back was when I was playing the First Indiana Jones DVD. I had all the surround working (seemingly) but when it got to the scene in the beginning of the movie where Indiana Jones is talking to the Military Intelligence guys trying to explain to them about the ark you could hear papers shuffling...echo's in the back of the lecture hall they were in, but no dialog sound (weird). But there WAS sound comming out of the center channel (just no talking)! I was using the latest version of the Videolan client and it was set correctly to 5.1.

Here are the pages I found that describe everything (hopefully)

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?pa...eMixerControls

and

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=SbLiveMixer

-Doug

It's not a problem of knowing how to USE alsamixer....its a problem of which bars to mute/raise and lower and which to unmute. The names of each slider are not all intuitive and don't all work unless others are correctly configured. With over 15 of them the combinations are endless if you don't know which ones need to be set right.

Actually this helps tremendously! It gives me a baseline to use so that I know the problem is or is not my mixer settings. The Card is a sb00060 Sb Live 5.1 card. The alsa driver is the one that comes with FC 3, I would hope that it's possible to get it to work right.

thanks!

I'll post back to the thread when I get it fixed in case you are curious.

Master: 85
Headphone LFE 1: off
Headphone 1: 0
Headphone Center 1: off
Tone: off
Bass:58
Treble: 75
3D Control - Switch: off
3D Control Sigmatel - Depth: off
3D Control Sigmatel - Rear Depth: off
PCM: 87
Surround: 100
Center: 100
LFE: 0
Wave: 100
Wave Center: 100
Wave LFE: 0
Wave Surround:100
Music: 100
Line: 0 off
Line LiveDrive: 0
Line2 LiveDrive 1: 0
CD: 0
Mic: on
Mic Boost: off
Video: off
Phone: off
IEC958*: off
PC Speaker: off
Aux: 100
AC97: 100


PS you do not realy need LFE channel on if you have 5.1 speaker system

Does'nt the LFE slider control subwoofer volume (low frequency?) in a 5.1 system?

thanks for the info...I'm getting lots of good help from people

-Doug

Negative for LFE channel. It creates emulation matrix for subwoofer for those of 2 or 4 spreakers

I do not want to cause any arguments, but either I am not reading between the lines or something is being overlooked in here. AC97 is for on board sound cards. If your on board sound card is SB Live! I suppose you could use AC97 but it was originally for a normal SB basic stereo card not 5.1. If I am wrong with this one please let me know, but the important fact is this, if you have an onboard sound card AND a SB Live! card they will not function together. If you have AC97 active at any volume in the ALSA Mixer it will give you a terrible feedback. If your ALSA Mixer is giving you two sliders for AC97 one is the sound volume and the other is the capture,. You will have to go the the terminal as root user, type alsamixer and it will give you a text mixer that tells you exactly what each slider is. Then you can cancel the AC97 volume. The one for capture may be alright but you may want to test it.

Now if someone out there knows how to make both the on board and oof board sound cards work together please let me know.

That's OK.....no offense taken..really (It's Christmas damn it!).

I do have another onboard sound device. But it's disabled in the BIOS (That was one of the things I disabled first). I do think I experienced the problem you've described. But I'm not sure that the AC97 slider does not have some sort of important use under sblive (but why?)

Basically you'd be right with one little something of no. No consists of
If you noticed my alsa, for instance, I use microphone (Mic on 100%) for Skype. And if you need mike
you'll have to use AC97

I made my settings the same as yours and went to [URL] http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=SurroundSound [\URL] and downloade the SDL testfiles. I then used the "aplay" command with the chan-id.wav file (to identify the speakers and their locations with sound). All I get is "Front Left" and "Front Right" From the correct speakers. The rear speakers don't say anything and the center speaker echos the sound from the front and left front speakers. In other words...it aint workin. I know that the wav file works because when I had fedora going before, by muking with the sliders more I was able to at least get it to say "rear left" and "rear right" from the back left and right speakers respectively.

Can you download the chan-id.wav file and run the aplay program on it and see if you get similar results?

thanks!

I made my settings the same as yours and went to http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=SurroundSound and downloade the SDL testfiles. I then used the "aplay" command with the chan-id.wav file (to identify the speakers and their locations with sound). All I get is "Front Left" and "Front Right" From the correct speakers. The rear speakers don't say anything and the center speaker echos the sound from the front and left front speakers. In other words...it aint workin. I know that the wav file works because when I had fedora going before, by muking with the sliders more I was able to at least get it to say "rear left" and "rear right" from the back left and right speakers respectively.

Can you download the chan-id.wav file and run the aplay program on it and see if you get similar results?

thanks!