I was wondering if the SBLIVE Value card (released a few years ago) supported 5.1 Surroundsound speakers. I am considering purchasing them.

I know that the card supports 4.1 and I know that it has a digital output port on it, but I don't know if that will cut it. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Now, for the Linux side of things:

I am wondering if the Emu10k1 driver will work with digital output, if that is the only way that the 5.1 will work. Also, with the 5.1, I am wondering if it in fact requires the digital. Does it work in Linux, is the basic question.

Thanks, guys.


~Dave

I have been able to get both.....SB live value and SB live 5.1 cards to work with Slackware and Linux from scratch..........using both Digital and Analog modes.........

I use the emu10k1 driver from sourceforge.....!

ALSA is garbage and I refuse to use it!!

I've been able to use alsa successfully with my SB Live! on 5.1 on following Distros
Debian Sarge
Slackware
Suse 9.1
Gnoppix
Knoppix
Ubuntu
gNOX
Vidalinux
Mepis
Libranet
Jintoo
Slax
kinneret
Vectorlinux
FreeBSD

My sblive value!!!!!! card works better than the integrated onboard cak that Via provide, as far as real time audio processing using Jack goes, and it's three/four years older. Distro: Agnula DeMuDi.

Ah, Debian Multimedia Distribution!!
I tested it. Great for music studios.
But here is another absolutely wondorous multimedia distro that nobody seems to know.
Here is press release
http://www.startcom.org/index.php?lang=en&app=14&rel=3
Home site is there
http://www.startcom.org/
I tried it too. Does miracles with music. Definitely recommended as music studio

I have an Soundblaster LIVE! MP3+5.1 channels. It worked with 5.1 analog output using ALSA with no problems. I took it out and used Turtle Beach Santa Cruz because it has much, much better sound quality and a lot easier to configure for recording. Read the ALSA or OSS documentation how to setup digital output. Digital output will not have 5.1 channel information unless the source has 5.1 channel information.

I suggest to not use Soundblaster LIVE because it dithers sound and it rewrites bus registers to make sure the PCI bus is going at 33 MHz. This means that you have a high possiblity of DMA problems and corrupted data in the future.

I also have the Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 that outputs up to 8 channels but there is no sounds that have 8 channels just 6 channels. It is a lot better than any sound card that I have used. It closely matches sound quality of the Lynx Studio Technology LynxTWO sound card. To bad that a/52 does not support sampling rates up to 192 KHz and at 24-bit audio resolution because Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 will be very, very crystal clear when playing movies.

I thought the Live! value only supported four channel. I coule easily be wrong but you might want to check on the Creative site.

Thank you all. This is valuable information.

Just FYI, I am running Debian SID, when not bound to Winblows.