I recently bought an Audigy 2 (not platinum or pro, just the card), and upgraded to the new 2.6 kernel (which seems really cool, by the way). Now, the new kernel has ALSA drivers as part of the kernel now, and I had to build a new driver for my new sound card anyway, so I figured now would be a good time to switch to a better sound system.

Now, after a couple hours of reading and tinkering, I had the sound working, and in all 5 speakers. However, I've had three irritating problems:

Problem 1: I can't change the volume! None of the volume or balance sliders in XMMS do anything, and alsamixer's settings don't actually change the volume - if I turn any slider half way down or more, the speaker goes silent, but there's no gradual volume change. Changing the volume for ALSA does nothing, too.

Problem 2: I've been all over the Internet, and I can't find a way to set the default card. I also have a semi-functional sound card build into my motherboard, and that comes up as card 1. I can't figure out how to make it either ignore that card, or use my other card as the primary card. Also, I can't figure out how to tell aplay to use my second card at all.

Problem 3: aRts doesn't seem to like ALSA. I tried everything to make it work, but I get no sound unless I use OSS emulation with ALSA, OSS sound with aRts, and tell it to use the custom device: /dev/dsp1.

Help! I'm using Gentoo, kernel 2.6.0.

Ok, I can answer one of them. You can disable your on board sound card in your Bios. That way, your os won't even know it's there.

Thanks. I'll try that. Anybody know about the other stuff?