Benefits of using ALSA
 

Hi, I already have my soundcard working, and it works just fine. I have a 4 speaker setup, and can control them all seperately. No problems with sound at all on my system.

Is there a benefit to using ALSA for people like me? Is the sound going to be "clearer" or are there going to be more controls on my mixers or anything like that? Maybe will I be able to control the bass and treble?

Thanks for any suggestions/ideas/slams/flames/bashes/accusations/attacks/verbal-abuses/stomps/slanders or links. :D

Latency.

Some soundcards have more vol. control with Alsa. Check out your card at thier website.

Oh right, good point. I guess I should have said my soundcard shouldn't I?

Thank you for an idea though ;)

It's a creative SbLive mp3 5.1 +

Cool

MasterC, do not be fooled into thinking that you don't have a SBLive MP3 5.1+, you do not! You have an SBLive 5.1+... the MP3 part of the SBLive card is purely the Windows software bundled with it... there's no hardware MP3 decoding! Just as the SBLive Gaming card has nowt to do with gaming, just the software bundled with it! Just thought I'd mention...

Oh yeah, I did SO much research on that before I bought it. I didn't run Linux much at the time, so I was looking for winbloze features. Yeah, it took some hard corps searching at the time to find that out, but after a while I did. But thank you for letting me know in case I didn't. ;)

But now for the dumb question:
Does the 5.1 mean anything either? Or is the SBLive Value and my card no different in hardware whatsoever?

Thanks, and Cool

I believe that the SBLive Value, such as mine, is a 4.1 card, so you can only have a max of 5 speakers attached: Front Left/Right, Rear Left/Right and Sub. The 5.1 has, I believe the ability to connect 6 speakers. I'm not sure what the other one is though...

The #5 speaker is the center channel in 5.1 configuration. Movies that are recorded in 5.1 usually have most of the dialog coming through the center channel.