What do I have to do to get my souncard to use 4 speakers and the subwoofer when playing mp3s in xmms. And 5.1 sound in xine ( haven't installed it jet but asking anyway ) I Have a CMI8738 sound card and I'm using vector linux (Slackware compatible) At the moment I'm getting stereo sound from my 2 front speakers when using xmms.

I'm having the same problem, im not getting any sound from my sub or its 4 speakers but i am getting sound from the 2 on my monitor. :\

Any help on this would be much appreciated...

^ STill would be appreciated... *hint hint*

I have Creative SBLive 7.1 24 bit SoundCard
And Slackware 10.2

This is the solution I found:

create in your home dir file .asoundrc with text in it:

#########################################################
#This is the standard setting (see: "!default")
#This profile, the default loaded, upmixes stereo sound to 5.1.

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "surround51"
slave.channels 6
route_policy duplicate
}
########################################################
#This is the normal spdif output profile (optical, toslink).

pcm.!spdif {
type plug
slave.pcm "hw:0,1"
}

#######################################################
#This is what one could call the "factory default setting", in other words, it only plays the actual channels. so if you fx want to watch a 5.1 movie, on the analog output, this is the option you want.


pcm.analog {
type plug
slave analog_slave;
}

pcm_slave.analog_slave {
pcm surround51;
format S32_LE;
}


then open xmms. choose alsa plugin to output.
for mplayer to play 5.1 try this: mplayer -ao alsa movie-file.avi

I trully hope it will help ya.
Enjoy.