Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit External - Volume control not working
 

I just bought a Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit External. It works great. However the master volume control button on the box doesn't turn the volume up or down. It mutes the volume fine but not up or down.

Any ideas how I get this to work? Is there a config file I missed some where?

Thanks,
Michael

Well, well....

You've come a lot further than I have. I've got a Live! 24-bit as well, but have been unable to find a suitable driver for it. Could you tell me what system you have and the driver you have used to get it working...please?

Take care!

SB Live External
 

I'm using Fedora Core 3. All I did was just plug it in and reboot. When it hit the hardware configuration screen I hit any key. It asked me did I want to configure the SB. I said configure. and done.

SBlive drivers
 

Well,
I bought recently a sblive external 24 bit with usb
and when i first rebooted in suse (9.2) in xmms I was able to
change the output plugin ALSA to use the soundblaster.
However, with soundmodule from yast, I got an errormsg saying
something like "the installed soundcards do not match the index, should I change this ?"
By answering either yes or no, only my internal soundcard was listed.
If I then saved this configuration, the soundblaster live wasn't working anymore.
But after typing in a konsole modprobe snd-usb-audio
I could use the sblive again, but only with xmms.
(Not with amarok and juk isn't starting at all (which doesn't has to do anything with the soundsetup))

If I try to add a soundcard manually with yast2, I can't find a driver for the sblive 24bit external, but
for a lot of other creative products, I do ....

I'm not offering a solution here, but maybe my experience might be any help...

I can't get SBLive! External to play out of more than 2 speakers (5.1). Xandros 3OCE picks it up but I can't get all the speakers up. Any ideas? Also the "alsamixer" only has four volume controls of which 2 don't work.

I have a SoundBlaster Live External also, any one got this to work 100% ?

For those interested, I managed to get audio with amarok by upgrading to the version 1.2.3 for KDE 3.3 (not sure if it works with KDE 3.4). In the configuration window, select Engine, in Sound System: "GStreamer Engine" and in Output Plug select: "gconfaudiosink". Not sure if this is correct, this is the one that works for me, except for the problems mentioned above.

I am able to get audio with xmms and amarok, but the volumen control does not work at all, also if I press the Mute button, it mutes the sound as expected :p however I am not able to get audio back again ... unless I disconnect and reconnect the USB cable.

Thanks

Well, I guess that's good? Thanks for the reply, I'll try it.

To reset the volume after hitting mute I have to log in and readjust it in the volume control panel.

Rather annoying. I wish I could use the dial.

I find I don't have the "GStreamer Engine" so your fix won't work for me.

Has ANYONE gotten this to work properly?
 

I have been working diligantly for over a week now trying different things with the asound.conf and the .asoundrc file as well, neither in which have allowed me to listen to more than 2 speakers.

I have Fedora Core 4 with all updates and i am running XMMS and Mplayer and Antitok.

Please help me get the full surround going, it's driving me nuts.


Thanks,

Bic

SB Live External 24 Bit Fix
 

If you haven't gotten it to work yet...

Put this in your .asoundrc file and disable any onboard soundcards.

pcm.dmix51 {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
ipc_key_add_uid false
ipc_perm 0666
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
channels 6
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 8192
rate 44100
}
}

ctl.dmix51 {
type hw
card 0
}

pcm.stereo {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmix51"
ttable.0.0 1
ttable.1.1 1
}

pcm.!default {
type route
slave.pcm "dmix51"
slave.channels 6
ttable.0.0 1
ttable.1.1 1
ttable.0.2 1
ttable.1.3 1
ttable.0.4 1
ttable.1.4 1
ttable.0.5 1
ttable.1.5 1
}

pcm.duplicate {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmix51"
slave.channels 6
route_policy duplicate
}

thanks
 

thanks a ton :D

Just USB 1.1?
 

I wonder how that fits together: 24bit at 96 kHz, 5.1 channels and USB 1.1. Theoretically, that should work. But in practice, isn't the USB 1.1 bandwidth a bit low? Anyone ever tried to use 5.1 channels at max resolution?