I picked up one of these cards last weekend in an attempt to have something with better performance than my on-board sound. So far, it's been a rather painful exercise in getting the SB up and running.

Videos and audio clips are OK w/mplayer and kaffeine, Real Player is choppy, and I have no analog CD audio whatsoever (yes, the cable is connected).

I've updated ALSA to 1.0.10 and I updated my kernel a couple weeks ago, so I don't think that's the issue. I removed kmix to see if things would improve, but no luck.

Is this do-able, or would I be pulling out less hair by getting a different sound card?

Tnx

Is the SB Live a PCI unit?
If yes, the card should work.
Have you disabled the onboard sound?

It's a Live 24 (PCI), as opposed to a "plain" Live. Yes, the onboard sound has been completely disabled.

If its the Soundblaster Live! 24-bit 7.1 (PCI card):

Get ALSA and configure the card as a ca0106.

Been there, done that. Ran alsaconf - I expected to find a control for either CD, aux, or PCM, but nothing appears.

When I was runinning Suse 9.3. I downloaded v0.9 of ALSA I think. Uncompressed to /usr/src/alsa-xxx. I ran the instructions as in the INSTALL file. I could listen to mp3 and sound would play in whatever applicatio I ran.

What have you done to try to make sound run?

I just reinstalled alsa 1.0.10, this time building from source rather than using the rpm. CD audio is now working w/XMMS and CD Player, but volume control for each does nothing. Also, mixer in XMMS has no effect. KsCD has no audio whatsoever.

No problems with videos. Mic and line in

Oops - mic and line in appear to be working fine, too.