Hi there everyone, new to Opensuse 10.3 (x64 edition) and all I can say is wow. I have used quite a number of linux distros but this one really looks the most polished out of all that I have tried. Unfortunately there are a couple of questions/things I need sorted before I can use this os as my main.

First below is a summary of my system specs:

Processor: AMD® BOXED ATHLON™64 X2 3800+ PROCESSOR - 2.0GHZ DUAL CORE SOCKET AM2 2X512K 2000MHZ HT 90NM AMD64
Motherboard: GIGABYTE® "S SERIES" NVIDIA NFORCE 430 CHIPSET - FOR AMD K8 PROCESSORS @ 1000MHZ HT - INTEGRATED MAINBOARD - SOCKET AM2 ONLY
4X DDR2-800 (DUAL CHANNEL),
4X SATA2 + 2X ATA133, NVRAID, 2X PCI, 1X PCI-EXPRESS 1X, 8 X USB 2.0 (4 BY CABLE), IEEE1394, FULL ATX
FEATURES 1X PCI EXPRESS X16 SLOT, REALTEK 8CH HIGH DEFINITION AUDIO, NVIDIA INTEGRATED LAN, MICROATX, FEATURES SAFE & SMART TECHNOLOGY
Graphics Card: GEFORCE 6100 VGA, 512MB
RAM: Times 2" TRANSCEND® JETRAM™ HIGH-PERFORMANCE 512MB DDR2-533 240-PIN MODULE : CL4, 4-LAYER PC BOARD (Aka in total 1GB Or Ram)
Box: GIGABYTE® CHASSIS - ATX TOWER 4-IN-1 SOLUTIONS : BLACK/SILVER DUAL TONE CHASSIS, KEYBOARD, MOUSE WITH 400W 24-PIN PSU
DVDRW: LITEON® SHORT HALF-HEIGHT DVD MULTI-WRITER + LIGHTSCRIBE, 16X+R/-R, 8X +R/4X -R DL, 8X +RW, 6X -RW, 5X -RAM, 16X DVD, 48XCDR, 24X RW
Harddrive: SEAGATE® BARRACUDA™ 7200.10 SERIES - 250GB SERIAL ATA II (SATA2) PLUS - SERIAL ATA 300 (3GBPS) WITH 16MB CACHE @ 7200RPM
Soundcard: CREATIVE® SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY VALUE PCI SOUND CARD - 6 CHANNEL SURROUND SOUND SUPPORT - EAX SUPPORT


Question 1)

How do I emulate Mp3's to surround sound? In other words how can I get mp3 audio to play out through all my speakers (I have a 5.1 speaker setup)

Question 2) I have two hard discs, the one that Opensuse is installed on an IDE, and the other with all my backups is a SATA drive. Problem is that my SATA drive is formated to be a "Dynamic Disc Drive" and of cause Opensuse can't mount it. Anyideas?

I also have the Creative Audigy card on my openSuSE 10.3 system. The computer uses an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ AM2 on an ASUS motherboard. I don't know if you ran this Audigy sound card on a Windows system, but it would never put any audio into the Center Speaker unless you were running a 5.1 source like a movie. As for Linux, while there is a PCM surround mixer control, I am not sure just what it does. Here is the solution that I decided to use and I did not go with the basic amplified 5.1 speaker system.

Instead, I purchased Creative's separate add-on Audigy adapter card called an I/O card which added an optical output. I then use a 7.1 Sony STR-DG600 receiver with an optical input and several small speakers with an amplified sub-speaker. The SONY provides several multi-speaker emulation modes as well as something called muti-stereo which works the best I think on real stereo content and puts sound to all speakers. The Total system cost was $750, but it sounds really good and you can most likely do better on price if you buy everything at once, which I did not. I tried all sorts of other computer speaker setups, but nothing ever came out as good as my present system. Also, there are other Linux supported sound systems that offer optical outputs. When you go optical, you let the amp decide what to do with stereo sound and when you output 5.1 or 7.1, this amp sees and tells you what output type you are sending and stops using the stereo setup you have as default. Also, SuSE/Linus supports original 5.1 and 7.1 sound DVD's out an optical port. The audio card quality is not as important when using an external decoder over an optical cable.

As for your NTFS Dynamic Disc Drive, I have bad news for you. Very few disk managers can do anything with this setup. It can't be backed up by many and no one claims to convert it back that I know of on the fly. I suggest you backup this drive as best you can and repartition it for Basic NTFS and never use a Dynamic Disc Drive again. It has been a while since I ran into this problem, but I took my own advice and never allowed Windows to convert a Basic NTFS partition into a Dynamic Disc Drive after my first problem.

Thank You,

Hi, I will most definitely look into getting an Audigy adapter card. Although when I ran the system in Windows, with using Creative software I did used to get sound out of all my speakers.

I know I can format my 250GB disc, problem is that I am not inclined to do so, as I have various files that I do not want to lose. But I suppose if that must be done