I have an aureal vortex 8830 chipset up and running on Suse 9.3. Everything seems to work pretty well except the spdif out volume cannot be controlled. The first time I plugged the fiber optic cable in I banged my head on the bottom of my desk it was so loud and I had to run over to the receiver and turn it down.

I have tried all the various volumes from alsamixer kmix etc nothing affects the spdif volume up or down. Actually disabling the sound system in KDE doesnt even help it justs keeps playing away.

The sound is crystal clear I mean it is beautiful, if I could only control the volume. Incidentally I tried just going to 4 channel analog and the rears dont seem to output even though I have enabled the 4 channl with kmix. The rears work perfectly out the fiber optic SPDIF(and it sounds way better) tho and I just want to get the volume working with it.

Anybody have experience with this card and the SPDIF I would really appreciate some help with it. I have googled and searched this forum for help for my specific problem but cant find an answer, typically this card works or doesnt work at all.

Thanks all

been a couple of days.... bump

OK can anybody suggest another forum
where do all the alsa experts hang out?

hello,
since no one has responded, I will suggest the foll. Aureal Vortex are the same as Turtle beach cards. So this is maintained by a seperate person. These details are given in the Sound HOW-TO.

PM me if you need more help.

bye

Try to use a software volume control (that is, one that modifies the digital data itself instead of telling the soundcard). You can probably configure ALSA to do it.The soundcards hardware mixer maybe doesn't work for S/PDIF.

sorry for the belated reply but I really thought that this thread was going nowhere. Turtle beach ,ahhh yes , good idea -reason I have kept this card is the wonderful sound you get from the turtle beach chipset.
After reading a little about digital output it appears to be pretty difficult to implement a solution and the solutions appear to be fairly resource intensive. I have currently gone back to 4 point analog and it fills the room with sound nicely anyway

Incidentally however I have a windows box hooked out digitally to the same receiver and can modify the volume via a slider?
anyways guys thanks for trying to provide some info on the subject.

oh and aureal vortex cards are supported somewhat by alsa but I guess they dont have complete access to the source of the drivers because Creative must must under any circumstances control the world I mean at least the world of sound cards and so they bought Aureal out and killed them.