surround sound using mic... ports
 

I know on windows that came w/ this comp i had a program that let me have surround sound using mic, line out and line in to use as surround sound. Is there a way in linux to do that? Or what can i do to get surround sound?

More information dude. What kind of sound chipset is it, are you using ALSA or OSS drivers?

I'll guess you're using ALSA as it seems to be most popular, open a terminal and run 'alsamixer'. That should give you a mixer app and just have a look around in there for something that may be set to 2ch, if you change that to 4ch or 6ch it'll get your surround working.

Thanks... Ok i did that but no luck. i think (almost sure) i have VIA 8237 (alsa mixer)i have the master, PCM surround, center, iec playback up. and i am not getting sound. i dont know if i need to have a real surround sound song going but if that is it is there a way not to have it that way.

You need to have a real surround sound song playing and you need to make sure the app you're using it set to output surround otherwise it'll downmix it to two channels. If you have alsa-utils installed you'll also have a small app called speaker-test, check that man page for different ways to use it.

Is there a way to get the sound to go uot of all speackers and when it is surround sound music it will use surround sound.

Sure, I didn't know off the top of my head but Google for Alsa two2six, something like that should find what you're after.