how to get equal sound level from front and rear speakers with sblive
 

I've got working setup of 4 speakers (logitech z-540) and sblive value. It's working good when I use only the front speakers. I'm using gnome alsa mixer and the control of volume for the speakers is really (I mean really) lame. In the mixer I've got 'master', 'pcm' and 'wave' controlls, which all control only front speakers volume. There is also one which controls the rear speakers volume, called 'wave surround'. There are also a lot of controls which don't do anything. 'master' controll is unusable, because the volume doesn't seem to be distributed equally along two front speakers at different settings, and they get completely silent whent it's at 50% (so I have it always at 100%). All of the programs use 'pcm' to controll volume (there are ways to get eg xmms to use different one, but this is not a real solution), so 'wave' stays at 100% too. Then again, setting 'pcm' and 'wave surround' to equal value will not make all the speakers play with the same volume. This is way too complicated that it should be.

I would really appreciate it if someone would tell me how to make it work the way it should work (master controll works just like pcm controll, but for all 4 speakers), or at least how to get mplayer to change volume for front and rear speakers, instead of just the front ones.

I have the same problem with my SB Live!-card. The master volume only regulates the front speakers, and it's therefore difficult to achieve equal volume overall. Great if somebody has a solution for this. Are there any better mixers out there?

there are better mixers but it doesn't get alot better
the best or at least the most complete and easy to see mixer i have found is
qamix
http://www.suse.de/~mana/kalsatools.html
just compile it yourself and in the package is a configuration file to load for sbLive
(just follow instructions)
you still have to mess with it constantly though
the front tab is playback and has everything you need right there
alsa is really cryptic but it can really do alot with that card -- the price of power is the absurd complexity