Nothing here. I've tried everything.

Nothing here either. I can't even get the rear channels to work *at all*, even without playing to the front.

This card had me so pissed off that I started using an Aureal Vortex again. I came back to try it and it STILL is broken.

I wonder if all channels work with SPDIF?

I have enough!!!
Now I have a new sound card (Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS). My new card works well under linux and i can't life without it anymore. Shit on TERRATEC's SixPack

I can't remember why i bought this shit card.
But i know why to use Creative Sound Cards:
They work well
they are the best
and it's Creative
and there are well working LINUX DRIVER

With my Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (based on CS46xx), I got all output channels working. My goal was copying the front channels to the other channels to be used for headphones, for bi-amping, or tri-amping. I read the wiki documentation on surround sound. I can try hooking up my sound card and test out 5.1 channels with either mplayer or ogle playing a DVD movie in AC-3 or Dolby Digital mode, but I need to get some wire and an active filter for the subwoofer channel.

Go to http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=SurroundSound

If you want real surround sound, download sound effects from LADSPA and you should get unlimited control of sound.

You many want to change a few lines in "/etc/asound.state".

Creative Labs sound cards color the sound too much and they corrupted the data in my systems.

I wouldn't call Creative "the best", but they certainly do have some of the most well-supported Linux drivers because so many people own the cards and the DSP hasn't really changed much since around 1997.

The CS46xx are really good DSPs, under Windows. Frankly, I find that cards like the Santa Cruz still surpass the Audigy 2 in audio quality and capabilties (like multiple record and output devices). This is what makes it such a difficult card to work with, because it has two AC97 codecs onboard (Cirrus CS4294 and Cirrus CS4297). This is a double-edged sword on Linux, but it's probably something that could be routed with something like JACK. I'm interested in how they achieve some of its capabiltities on Windows, actually. It's very likely that they use DirectSound to do the routing to both DSPs.

Advanced ALSA configuration (aside from compiling and installing it) is beyond my knowledge of Linux audio. ALSA is just too deep for me to make this work.

If anyone wants a quick solution, you can use 4-Front's OSS drivers from opensound.com. I used them with this card for about two years. 6-channel analog and SPDIF through the versa-jack works fine, but there are a few drawbacks;

1) It's the aged OSS API. It's higher latency. It has less of a future on Linux.
2) 4-Front refuses to implement hardware mixing, even though its clearly viewable in the ALSA codebase, instead opting for their software Virtual Mixer. The Virtual Mixer, while decent, has poorer audio quality (to my ears) and adds even more latency.
3) They aren't free (but are inexpensive).
4) While the rear codec can be controlled independantly, it was not (true) surround, and they simply mirror the stereo PCM to the rear channels. This isn't really a big problem anyway, since few (no?) games even really support surround capabilities on Linux. It might only be a problem if you use your PC for DVDs and want surround through MPlayer or XINE(lib).
5) The Virtual Mixer doesn't support mmap, which is used in all Q3A games (and older id software engines as well).

There are a few benefits;

1) Great tech support from 4-Front with quick response times. They're normally quite willing to fix any problems very quickly.
2) Independant control over the Virtual Mixer devices, with advanced (JACK-like) routing if you buy the (inexpensive) PRO upgrade.
3) Real-time effects through a plugin system.
4) Rear channels work.


On the other hand, I'll probably just take the route that you took, and buy a Soundblaster Audigy2. I wouldn't mind having the firewire port, even though I still consider it a sonically inferior card to the Santa Cruz in many respects. I think you can get an Audigy2 from Newegg for $50-$70, and it will work very well, with the default ALSA settings.

I got 6 channels working with mplayer. The command that I used
gmplayer -channels 6 -ao alsa1x:surround51

Or for those people that opens up videos from the command line
mplayer -channels 6 -ao alsa1x:surround51

Then I opened up a video that has a 6 channel sound. I got 5.1 surround sound but there are a few quirks.
1) The subwoofer (right channel) channel outputs computer bus noise and there is no way to fix it. Probably the snd-cs46xx sound module needs to be fix.
2) There is no way you can adjust the delay of the rears if you are sitting right next to them. I think the rear channel delay is about 15 milliseconds.
3) There is no way to adjust the subwoofer's cut off frequency.
4) Mplayer complains about alsa libraries but it still outputs 5.1 surround sound with out any problems. mplayer outputs
"alsa-control: mixer attach error: No such file or directoryALSA lib control.c:654: (snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL"

The "surround51" should already come with ALSA. At the console type "aplay -L". You should see a whole list goes by. Scroll through the list and find surround51.

If you want to test the output channels to see if they are correctly connected to the amplifier or just want to know they are working.
Go to http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=Speaker-Test

For Newbies: To compile speaker-test, type make and in an instant it will compile speaker-test for you.

BTW, I used mplayer version 1.0pre4-3.2.

I found that upgrading to the latest 2.4 kernel really did wonders for my sound. Everthing in the darn OS made a sound lol.
Other that that I am not sure why it is causingyou such grief. Little odd really.

Again, as someone mentioned before - you seem to be using an entirely different chip. It's not that sounds don't play back, it's that the rear channel doesn't work properly. Upgrading the kernel will do nothing, because many of us compile the ALSA drivers by hand and load them as modules.

You can cross out 1, 2, 3 on the problems that I had. I just need to reload the modules or reboot. The subwoofer channels works with out bus noise or with out any noticable noise at all. I checked the man pages for mplayer. It has a way to adjust the subwoofer cut-off (default is 60 Hz) but I do not know what type of filter the developers used. 60 Hz is pretty low if your woofers in your loudspeakers are smaller than 8 inches and you are playing them at very high volumes. The rear delay (default is 15 ms) can be adjusted up to 1000 ms.

The fronts, rears, center, subwoofer works properly with my setup. I played a divx video that has AC-3 encoded for the audio.

Well, the speaker-test did work for me, testing surround40. I'm about to pull out my other speakers, which have been collecting dust for about a year, since I couldn't use them. Now, I'm running the 2.6 kernel, using the kernel ALSA modules, and experimental DSP for the cs46xx. I guess somewhere in there, it fixed my problem. Thanks for the comments, at least now I know I wasn't the only one who couldn't get it

Also, fwiw, I agree that the Santa Cruz is far superior to any other Creative card that I've seen or used. Creative cards have a bunch of other things that may be nice as well, like on board MIDI ports, front drive bays (even though I couldn't use it now, its a nice concept), etc,... But the quality of the TBSC is so much better in my opinion. And you are right, the card is perfect for a Windows user.

In 4.0 en 5.1 mode my front speakers don't work, the rest works fine. Anybody else have this problem?

I'm somewhat new to linux, I had red hat 9 but updated to mandrake 10.1 anyways i have the turtle beach santa cruz sound card and I can't get it to work. I go under my configuration properties in my Gnome Enviroment and it has the driver installed and everything. The odd thing is that I can play cds just find but wavs and midis or anythign else like sounds in games and stuff dont work at all... How did you guys get what sound you have to work? I am confused and I looked ALSA's website and read their thing but not sure how to do all of that...can anyone simplify it for me or something... I would really apperciate it...

Thank You,

Dustin

Make sure PCM is set properly in alsamixer.

I found this solution on the web. Enter 'plug:dmixs51' for all devices in all players and surround sound should work (if speaker-test works).

In my case I could replace 51 with 71 and 6 channels with 8 to get 7.1 surround working, but as I have no applications that use 7.1 surround those side speakers remain useless all the time, so I set it to 5.1, this way the side speakers duplicate the front on my system.
You could also set it to 2.0 and 2 channels, then (on my system (realtek alc650/alc880)) it gets spread on all speakers. (4.0 and 4 channels)
The only problem with this methode is that you have to choose one fixed channel count that counts for all programs.

I found it!
This /etc/asound.conf file is ajusted for my 7.1 surround, but if you only have 5.1 surround then do the following:

• change channels to 6
• remove all refrences to the 7th an 8th channels (6 and 7) (the last 2 in all bindings and ttable)
• remove s71
• change 0.707945 to 1
• change 0.501187 to 0.707945
• change 0.501187 to 0.501187
• set !default to whatever you want (except 71 ofcourse)

This way all upmixing go as they should without too loud channels because of multiple speakers.
(5.1 on my 7.1 sounds like in dolby's specifications because it creates fantom speakers between side and rear, which happens to be the place where the surround speakers in 5.1 should be.
You could add any custom device you want this way.