Hello there;
I am new to linux...very new so please bear with me.
I have installed a Sound Blaster Live card on my system to get 4 speaker sound when watching dvd's. IT works perfectly while in windows so i know the speaker set up and hardware is okay.
The problem is that i get the same audio coming from both the front and rear speakers no matter what i play (mp3, dvd, audio cd etc...) or using what (mplayer, xine, ogle etc) . The other wierd thing is that on the Gnome mixer i have 4 Mixers:
A sigmatel OSS one
a realtek OSS one
A sound blaster ALSA one
and a VIA ALSA one (from the bulit in auido on mother board)

and here is where it get really freaky.
the sigmatel mixer will control the front speakers with either it's PCM or PCM2 channel
the Wave Surround channel on the SBLive one conttrols the rear speakers.
BUt it gets even wierder.
If i mute the sigmatel mixer the back speakers stay on but if i mute the SBLive one the front and back speakers go mute.

I have search around and have not found anything on such an issue.

After having to reintsalll linux the issue remains...HELP!!

As for my system:
Fedora core 2
Kernel 2.6.5-1.358
Sound Blaster Live PCI
Nvidia Geforce 2 64 meg video card
640 Megs of ram
AMD Duron 1300Mhz
Anything else you need to know please just ask

Isn't that normal (that's the way it is on my 5.1 setup)? You might just not be playing an MP3 encoded for surround, try finding one or playing a movie/game that supports it.

Games in Linux do not have surround sound because of module (driver) limits. Certain modules, like ICE1724, can output 6 or channels using OSS but using ALSA drivers. Music is only 2 channel output, so you have to find an Xvid, divx, or play a DVD movie to output 6 channels. Use alsamixer because GUI mixers are buggy.

isn't openAL a surround sound thing for games?

No, its similar like OpenGL instead its for sound to make it easier for programmers to write programs or games for many operating systems. Mplayer and many other programs can use OpenAL or SDL to play sound.

I have tried surround sound sources such as a dvd and i always get the same result....same audio ceoming from front and back even when that is not correct (know from running same movie in windows)

Using command:
mplayer dvd://1 -channels 6 -ao alsa:surround51

The above should give you 6 channel output.

Post what you have in amixer. I think you missed a setting while you were in alsamixer.