hi guys

im a total linux newbie and though i think its getting better i can almost pull my hair out with the sound!!!

i have an m-audio revolution 7.1 card on 5.1 trust speakers, on win xp all speakers work fine. on mandrake linux 10.1 beta i have only 2 speakers working

also evertime i start up the mixer it just crashees, this has happened to all my mandrake installations since 9.0!!!!! if i type alsamixer on console and manually put up the volumes i only get 2 way sound.

is there ANY way i can get my card to work as beautifully as it does on xp in 5,1???!!!!

Use Mandrake 10 Official because you are using a beta version and I can see why some programs are crashing.

You will have to use mplayer in console to output 6 channels. For an example

mplayer -channels 6 -ao alsa video_file.avi


You may need to add a little more options for you sound card if it sounds a little weird like

mplayer -channels 6 -ao alsa -format 4096 video_file.avi

The above will not work if the video file only has two channels because it will not do simulated surround sound. DVD movies and some video files will have 6 channel output. If you want simulated surround sound you can use the line below

mplayer -channels 4 -ao alsa -aop plugin=surround video_file.avi

or

mplayer -channels 4 -ao alsa -format 4096 -aop=surround video_file.avi


If you want some interesting effects for sound you can look up the -af option in man.