Hi Everyone. This is my 1st post and It's nice to be here.
I'm using PC LinuxOS 9.2. The problem I'm having is, I can't seem to enable surround sound with my sound card. I have a Sound Blaster Live 24Bit card. I get sound only from the 2 front speakers, and the subwoofer. Any help would be apprecieated. Thanks.

I don't know PC Linux, but generally you can get surround working after some tweaking. It won't be perfect, but it will work.

Are you using Arts or Alsa?

Thanks for replying. I'm currently using the ALSA "snd-ca0106" driver. Hope you can help.

Try using the snd-emu10k1 [alsa] drivers. You can easily set this in the PCLinuxOS control center (not KDE control center) under hardware and sound.
Then open a terminal in super user mode, enter your password, and type " alsamixer " (no qoutes). Adjust your volume controles till you get what your looking for.
I find the only way to get surround sound is to turn up the PCM volume and the wave surround volume.
Make sure you disable any integrated sound systems first (in the bios).
You may experience, like I do, that you have to adjust the alsamixer each time you boot up the PC. I was looking for the soloution to that when I came across your question.
Hope this helps you.

Surround sound can only be done if the source is 4 channels or more. This means only videos with 6 channel track or sounds with 6 channels. Games in Linux still outputs 2 channels because of the OpenSDL project. The following command provides surround sound. Getting the Creative Labs Soundblaster LIVE! 24-bit to output all six channels will take a long time. I suggest running alsamixer in full mode by doing 'alsamixer -V all'. After you got the settings type 'alsactl store' as root.

mplayer dvd:// -channels 6 -ao alsa:device=surround51

Do not complain about distorted audio when using mplayer. It is not mplayer, it is the card it self. Creative Labs sound cards are crap for their price. Sound cards based on VIA Envy 1724HT chip is the best to produce pure audio. I have Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 that is a lot better than any Creative Labs sound card.

cncman, if cody212 uses snd-emu10k1 module, it will not work. The correct module is snd-ca0106.

I recommend not using arts.

I apologize, I did not mean to mislead. I was only relaying info that works on my system. I also am running PCLinuxOS 9.2 with a sound blaster live. Perhaps I have the card models mixed up.

Since my last post I have switched to emu10k1 [OSS] drivers, and adjusted my sound configuration in the KDE control center from "auto" to "Open Sound System". Now the sound (surround too) is stable and clear.
P.S. I have found an application called KMix that is basically alsamixer for KDE; works great!

I appreciate all the replies. Unfortunately I'm not having any luck. I tried variations of all your comments, I'm trying to playback some dts audio cd's I have. In windows the play fine using VLC player. I set the out put to 5.1 in VLC and still only get sound from the sub and two front speakers. Perhaps your tweaks apply mainly to DVD playback. I must be missing something somewhere. Thanks again for your help.

You do not understand Linux. Surround sound in Windows is actually done by the driver when playing back a two channel source like music. In Linux, it does not have this, so copying the channels have to be done. Video Lan Client is useless because it is very glitchy, so I recommend using either mplayer or xine. To get surround sound all the time you have to add the code below to ~/.asoundrc.

A program like xmms. You specify simulatedsurround as the ALSA device. The sound should come out of all speakers. Though playing music out of 6 channels will give poor audio quality and this does not matter what OS. Music was meant to be played out of two speakers not 6 channels.

For the Soundblaster LIVE! 24-bit, you will have to type 'alsamixer -V all' and adjust the mixer. This card is like a woman because you have to adjust the mixer just right to get surround sound. I suggest playing a DVD movie set at a scene that has 6 channels playing. I have Soundblaster LIVE! not the 24-bit version. Sorry, I do not have the settings saved because I have moved from kiddy sound cards to a professional sound card. I have Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1. They are both easy to setup surround sound although the asoundrc script that I showd you above still have to be used. The problem with the script above is it may not work on every setup and every program.

I cetainly appreciate your responce to my dillema. And you're absolutly right I do not completely understand linux at this point in time. However I'm not too sure you understand the type of file I'm trying to play. I am not try ti simulate surround sound. I'm trying to play a coverted dts file of an old quad (4 channel) tape or album. I get real seperation in windows. As far as the type of player I should be useing, VLC or a progie called Foobar 200 are the only ones that will decode this type of file that I am aware of. You mentioned xine or mplayer. When I use these programs I you hear is static. Just like in Windows. As far as hearing sound from 2 speakers read this: (Pros: I bought this card a year ago. I am pretty much satisfied with it. I used it in a combination with Creative Inspire 7.1 audio system and they both do their job. I didn't try any professional stuff wit...
h it, I bought for sound playback only. I would say it's worth the money, if all you want is a 7.1 surround sound system that will play music. Overall it's a great entry level card, I didnt have problems with it on Windows.

Cons: There is a driver problem on Linux though. ALSA detected the chipset as CA0106. The problem is that it only supports 2 channels. So instead of having 7 speakers playing, I had only 2. I asked on forum... More »
s, I tried all kinds of tips and tricks and none worked. The advice that I got from others was to throw this card away and get a card which has a emu101k chipset. If you plan on using it in Linux, I would strongly suggest not to buy it, unless you are able to somehow make it work.

Other Thoughts: It's been 3 months since I gave up on the 7.1 on Linux (or BSD) with this card, but if you feel like playing around with it, this is the place to start reading things on CA0106: t I see the page has changed so there might be a chance that newer drivers have support for 7.1 in Linux. I was also unable to have all the features in Windows 2k/XP. For some reason 90% of the games didnt detect the card as EAX capable. Some did though, I recall Painkiller displaying the EAX option. Finally, I must say that this year I will buy a better card, maybe I will be able to have 7.1 under linux That was a post from someone at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829102176 It appears that I am not as out of touch as you imply. I appreciate your kind help, and I am very new at this. But I can follow instuctions. It just seams that ones I got from you are not accurate. I guess I should just use a different card. Thanks again.

Programs like mplayer, xine, vlc, and others only support up to 6 channels. Though ALSA supports up to 8 channels when using surround71 or just through OSS emulation.

It is rare that mplayer will not play it because it supports a lot more codecs than VLC and Xine combined. Also mplayer has very, very high tolerance for media files. If the media file can not be played on any media player in Windows or MAC, mplayer should be able to play it with little trouble. I suggest including -identify and -v when you run mplayer to play the sound file. These commands will give you some hints about it. However, probably PC LinuxOS did not inlcude DTS support when they compile mplayer.

The code that I gave you for ~/.asoundrc is a little wrong. Below is the correct syntax.

The line that reads "format S32_LE" is commented. You may need to uncomment it if aplay or other program complains that it needs format conversion.

Buying a card that has the emu10k1 chip will not help either. I said it in previous post that the emu10k1 is hard to output more than 2 channels. I recommend Turtle Beach Santa Cruz or any card based on VIA Envy 1724HT chip are a lot easier to setup multiple channels. The VIA Envy 1724HT chip matches the sound quality of LynxTwo from Lynx Studio Technology which is a superior sound card, but the VIA chip cost 1/6th less than the LynxTwo.

I recommend writting a bug report at alsa-project.org instead of complaining here or at newegg.com.

You get what you paid for. I suggest stop playing around with kiddy sound cards and come over to professional sound cards.

BTW, your distribution version is 0.92 not 9.2.