If this is your second day you are in for a rough ride. The best advice I can give is consider Linux a hobby. It is computing for computings sake (at least at the moment it is) so don't expect everything to work out of the box just like windows does. The hobby comes in getting things to work where previously they didn't - and learning something in the process. I assume what your saying is that you didn't install the driver and your using the one that came with your distro.
Fair enough. Go to /usr/local/etc and look for a text file called emu10k1 and open it with a text editor such as kedit or gedit (the text in gedit is easier to read for me).. There you will see a number of options, the ones that are of direct interest to you are USE_DIGITAL_OUTPUT=yes
and AC3PASSTHROUGH=yes MULTICHANNEL=yes the rest are fairly self explanatory and can be enabled or disabled according to tastes. Be sure to remove the # sign in front of the lines you want to enable as everything after a # is traditionally ignored. (For some odd reason these are called comments - but hey ho, there you go). After you have set your preferences you must now load them with the emu-script Open a command promt at usr/local/etc (the same place your saved preference file is located) by going to Tools/Open a Terminal and write ./emu-script then hit enter. Hopefully this will bring you cleanly back to the command prompt.
What you will have done is set your computer up to permanatly pump sound out to your external decoder. If your using desktop speakers don't use the AC3 passthrough option (set it to no) as this means that the AC3 signal will be passed straight through to an external dolby digital decoder and only then will it be decoded there. But I don't know if your set up does have its own decoder, or if its just digital speakers.

I think if you do this you should be done. If you have any problems try opening a command prompt first and entering the command modprobe emu10k1 or alternatively insmod emu10k1 as these commands will load the driver if its not already loaded - and then do everything I said above. modprobe is just probe for a module and load it (I think) and insmod is self explanatory i.e insert module. All drivers in Linux, unless their compiled into the kernel are loaded as modules.
Again i'm sure all this sounds baffling, it did to me two months ago when i knew as much as you which was zero. So its not impossible to do and you don't need to be a genius to learn. Linux at home though should be treated like a hobby - until you learn it. Don't wave a stick at it until you can accept that. Its about learning and educating yourself. It will take time.

Q

Having said that, I think it worth noting the irony that this is the first time anyone has aked me for help using Linux. Mmm... Interesting... I wonder, does that mean I'm not a n00b anymore?

Q

I also couldn't get digital output in Linux with my Audigy card and also spent weeks hunting for an answer.

I fixed this in the end by installing the emu tools package (in the /utils/mixer directory of the of the emu10k download).

I then only needed to type "emu-config -d" and much to my surprise it worked.

I have sb audigy.
I have installed creative driver.....
I need to active digital aoutput......and ac3 passthrout....

With emu-config -d I actived digital out but I'm not able to active ac3 pass.

Now I have installed ALSA driver 0.9.0.rc7

but I'm not able to active digital output and ac3 pass.

Can you help me?

bye by CNC.

Sure, read what was written above - and don't use ALSA, use OSS as your sound server. the emu10k1 driver does not support ALSA.

Q

Only difference here is you should run the ./audigy-script which is in the same place as ./emu-script. Just choose the correct one for the card you have.

Q

i dont know where to even begin on how to install the driver. supposedly Mandrake 9.1 has the driver installed but i get no sound only through analog, and i dont see a config file anywhere to set digital out = yes. if i go to usr>local>etc its empty???

plz help because like you guys ive been working on this so hard and my poor computer is getting all dented up lol.

all the forums ive searched, i cant even understand what they are talking about.

I've been using Mandrake 9.1 for two weeks - , following the advice give earlier in this thread I can't find a file called emu10k1 ANYWHERE and insmod, modprobe etc etc give me a bloody error - and I can't manage to install the decent Nvidia drivers for my Geforce 4 & I can't use my trackball optical - this is after two weeks of trawling forums and finding often contradictory advice none of which works for me. Sod it - maybe I'll try Linux again in a year or so. I've had enough

With mandrake 9.1, sb audigy work well.

You have to use audigy module that is the same of emu10k1.

I suggest you to download emu10k1-tools-mdk.....
i don't remember...

but...after sbaudigy will work very well.

bye by CNC

But I've uninstalled it now - waste of two weeks - Linux is incredibly user unfriendly for anyone who doesn't have some sort of programming background IMO. Maybe I'll come back onboard with Mandrake 10

i agree puppy, but i seem to install this thing once every 2 months. lol i still havent been able to get my damn sound working. !!! oh well. i hope no one calls CPS(computer protective services) on me.
because ive been beating the crap out of my poor little computer ... since then i have printed a picture of tux and have been using it for target practice. to vent my frustration.

I WILL GET SOUND OUT OF LINUX!

it is pretty rediculous that in this day and age of computers, that getting sound is actually a goal to achieve on a modern computer.

Im glad i dont wrestle with windows or my MacOS-X like this just to listen to my mp3s.

...welp, back to beating my head into a wall.

anyone get 5.1 to work on the 2.6.0 kernels yet???
im pulling my hair out over here. The alsa driver for my audigy 2 had exelent 5.1 under 2.4, now with 2.6 i cant get more the center channel and sub to work.
any ideas????

Operational, although not yet to my liking.

Install Alsa 0.9.8

cat >>modules.conf <<EOF
# ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore

## IMPORTANT:
## You need to customise this section for your specific sound card(s)
## and then run `update-modules' command.
## Read alsa-driver's INSTALL file in /usr/share/doc for more info.
##
## ALSA portion
alias snd-card-0 snd-emu10k1
#Input & Output configurations [snd_extin/snd_extout]
#* Creative Card wo/Digital out [0x0003/0x1f03]
#* Creative Card w/Digital out [0x0003/0x1f0f]
#* Creative Card w/Digital CD in [0x000f/0x1f0f]
#* Creative Card wo/Digital out + LiveDrive [0x3fc3/0x1fc3]
#* Creative Card w/Digital out + LiveDrive [0x3fc3/0x1fcf]
#* Creative Card w/Digital CD in + LiveDrive [0x3fcf/0x1fcf]
#* Creative Card wo/Digital out + Digital I/O 2 [0x0fc3/0x1f0f]
#* Creative Card w/Digital out + Digital I/O 2 [0x0fc3/0x1f0f]
#* Creative Card w/Digital CD in + Digital I/O 2 [0x0fcf/0x1f0f]
#* Creative Card 5.1/w Digital out + LiveDrive [0x3fc3/0x1fff]
#* Creative Card all ins and outs [0x3fff/0x1fff]
options snd-emu10k1 extin=0x3fff extout=0x1fff

## alias snd-card-1 snd-ens1371
## OSS/Free portion
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
## alias sound-slot-1 snd-card-1
##

# OSS/Free portion - card #1
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
## OSS/Free portion - card #2
## alias sound-service-1-0 snd-mixer-oss
## alias sound-service-1-3 snd-pcm-oss
## alias sound-service-1-12 snd-pcm-oss

alias /dev/mixer snd-mixer-oss
alias /dev/dsp snd-pcm-oss
alias /dev/midi snd-seq-oss
# Set this to the correct number of cards.
options snd cards_limit=1
EOF

run alsamixer
unmute / set the volume for PCM FRONT/CENTER/Surround, Front/Center/Surround (Here's the kicker) set the volume to 100 for wave. Scroll left untill you find "Audigy Analog/Digital Output Jack" for 5.1 channel output set to off, for stereo Digital out or Spdif AC3 passthrough set to On.

Don't forget to save your state.

The problem is that the port on the bask of the audigy does double duty "Digital/spdif out" and "subwoffer and LFM (.1) out" so it should be cabled differently depending on what you want. (NUTS)


If anyone knows how to enable the Live/Audigy Drive Digital out I woudl sure like to know.