I have read everything I can find on the web on this subject and tried them and I ether get command not found or no file etc.etc. I checked alsamixer and IEC958 is off. Just how do I get this sound card to work? I am a linux newbbie so try not to get over my head

The only thing that I can suggest is to look at the information on the ALSA web site.

http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Main_Page

I had a lot of trouble getting my Audigy SE working with Slackware Linux.

To start with, make sure that you have a real Soundblaster Audigy SE card and not one sold by computer companies such as Dell. Those cards don't work with Linux.

Download and install the latest drivers from the ALSA site.

Un-mute all the mixer settings and set the controls up about half way. I found that some driver versions had wrong names for things in my mixer and I had to enable or adjust things that didn't make sense to get it working.

If you want to use MIDI on the card then you need a special program to load the MIDI sound fonts into the card.

I can't bet more specific since I'm not using Debian. Hopefully someone more familiar with Debian can give you more detailed help.

You can also find troubleshooting suggestions on the ALSA site. There are notes for each sound card so look for the information related to the Audigy SE.

This card is indeed a pain in the ass, I can tell you.

If your OS uses ALSA, you should be able to get it running with relative ease, as long as you don't plan to use anything but stereo. Note that I said "should"

I assume you are using some kind of analog setup, in this case, you are right, you need to mute the channel called iec958. With an analog setup, most of these cards do use the analog front or center channels to regulate your volume.

We should concentrate on getting *any* sound first, later you can worry about surround, which has its own set of problems.

On the contrary, if you use a digital speaker set you should have the iec958 un-muted, and use the digital sliders instead of the analog ones.


Failing everything, you can still get it to work with OSS4, instead of ALSA. OSS4 just works from my experience, with a couple clicks on ossxmix you get full support for surround and to play multiple sounds concurrently. The main downsides of OSS4 are two: no functional midi support and no support for OSS4 at all in most professional/advanced audio applications.

WOW that did it Erik a new set of drivers! You would think that since this release was updated on June 27th they would have updated the drivers too, since they were released on May6th...... Go figure. I was kinda scared when you said Dell sound cards don't work with linux, I using an Optiplex GX 110 and I installed the sound card which is an Audigy SE by Creaative I was looking at the box to make sure....... Thanks a ton Erik I was going crazy trying to get this thing working
Hank

A pure pain in the ASS ....... But I like to play around with things until I get them working. I am a Broadcast Engineer and a Ham for over 35 years and not afraid to tackle anything electronic, This computer is too old to upgrade with Windows OS so I put Debian on it after a hard drive update from 15 gigs to 80 gigs and taking it to 512mb ram from 256mb, pure linux now, Thanks for your advice and nice to meet you.

Hank