My head hurts :-/

I have been looking for a solution to this for weeks now, and am no closer to figuring it out. When I play sounds, videos, .wav files. . .you name it, everything sounds beautiful. . .unless I play mp3's. Then, sound is distorted horribly. I can watch DVD's without a problem, but not MP3s.

I know its not the card, because I can boot the same machine into Windows<any version> and play MP3s without a flaw. I just don't want to. . .I switched to Linux to get AWAY from Windows, not to reboot every time I want to play music at a decent volume.

Another problem, I'll post it here because I don't know if it is related or not. I have a Via onboard 6-channel sound card. It has three ports. . .labeled 'Line In', 'Line Out', and 'Mic'. Normally, in 2-channel configuration, you would plug into 'Line Out' for Left and Right. 4-channel would be 'Line Out' for 1-2 and 'Line In' for 3-4. . . .you get the picture. Under the Windows drivers, this is how it works, 98 I use the ones on the CD for my MoBo, and XP has native drivers. In Linux, any distro that I have installed, it is 'Line In' that works as 1-2. This has been okay for the last several months. . .I even forgot about it, but now I'm starting to dual-boot into 98 for gaming. . . .making it kind of annoying, to crawl under my desk, dig through wires, and move my audio plug one notch, so I can switch to/from Windows so I can get a frag or two in.

Also, I just rebooted into Linux after running Windows for a few mins, and I had to manually load the sound modules. . .don't know if that means anything or not. The manual load was successful.

I'm going to include some cursory info about my system, but I have no idea what anyone is going to need, so let me know what to include and I will. Any help would be really appreciated.

System:
Athlon XP 2800+ (Barton)
512 MB DDR 2700
ASUS A7V8X-X motherboard
6-channel SoundMax audio (snd-via82xx)

Software:
primary OS - Fedora Core 3, current with Yum auto-updates
Alt OS Win98 SE
xmms-mp3
xine

i don't know whats up with the mp3 playback -- (it esentially has to be a software problem not related to the sound card driver)

on getting the sound out of the other slot this is most likely just another setting other than the output you are using in alsamixer. (3d or surround or something ???)

type
amixer
to see setting
if your gui mixer sucks try to get one that shows all the alsa settings and actually works

about mp3 try some other player .... ur hardware seems to be fine and its just the issue with the software. i'll second foo_barr_foo on it.

http://www.linux-faqs.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=26

Peeyush Maurya
http://geocities.com/peeyush_maurya/

I tried to look at some of the other players at lunch, but I just didn't have time to find them, and the ones I looked for on Yum weren't there. Although, as I mentioned, I have tried with both XMMS and Xine, both with the same result. Normally, I would exclude player software, but I don't know if these packages share any components.



I will try more tonight, but any insights wold be helpful.