Re: ALSA sound setup [SOLVED] [REVIVED]

[Tinus Kotzé <s13596128@bach.sun.ac.za>]

On Tue, 2003-02-25 at 01:49, ScruLoose wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 15, 2003 at 05:46:25PM -0600, Larry Holish wrote:
> > On Sat, Feb 15, 2003 at 04:53:42PM -0500, Scruloose wrote:
> 
> > > Woo-hoo! We have actual progress!  I've re(re(re))named snd-emu10k1 to
> > > snd-card-emu10k1, *commented out ALL the 'options'*, updated-modules, 
> > > rebooted, and *then* ran the snddevices script, and now amixer
> > > runs.  I don't know how to use amixer yet, so I unmuted the main volume
> > > with Gnome's mixer applet, fed a couple of my old WAVs (from the windows
> > > partition) into aplay, and it made noise.  Whee!
> > > The bad news is that it did, very literally, make noise.  Garbled,
> > > fuzzy, unrecognizable noise.  Now, that could be a not-really-compatible
> > > wav file, perhaps, or just settings to tweak in mixer or in .asoundrc...
> > 
> > Here's a small audio file format (.au) I use for testing.
> > http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/SillySounds/english.au
> 
> Whoo-ee!  Took me a while, but finally, by just poking the different
> sliders in alsamixer, I've got the signal louder than the noise, and I'm
> getting usable output.
> So the first key seems to be to remove the 'options' line in ALSA's
> modutils file, so that the module will actually load.
> The second main thing is that the initial mixer settings do *not*
> default to anything that makes sense (I *think* it defaults to muting
> all the channels that get noticed during install... or something).  Now,
> if you're like me and you have a SB Live card, the mixer settings are a
> bigger obstacle than one would think.  Alsamixer shows me 61 sliders,
> and only a couple of them have what I would call 'obvious' names...
> 
> So I do have a couple of questions left:
> Does anyone know why I have to run the snddevices script after every
> boot, and what do I do to make it persistent, so I won't have to do that
> anymore?
> Also, does anyone have any pointers to a resource that'll tell me what
> the 61 different mixer sliders for my card actually do?  Most
> especially, I'm wondering about how to get it to split a stereo signal
> to all 5.1 speakers... that thing that the Creative Labs drivers under
> WinXP call "Movie Mode"...?
> 
> Thanks for all the help that got me this far, and sorry I took so long
> to post my resolution...  What with school and all, it was only today
> that I found the time to mess around with the mixer and realize that the
> problem really is solved.
> 
> 	Thanks again
> 	-Chris
Hi

For getting sound to all speakers I use gamix. I'm sure you can also use
the console based utilities. 
In gamix 
1) Duplicate Front (checked)
2) Surround Enabled (checked)
3) Surround unmute (checked) and get same gain on the channel
4) Line-In as Surround (checked)
5) VIA-DXS - Full gain(don't know why, but xmms freezes if not set)

You also got some settings for reverb/echo effects

Hope this helps, 
Tinus

Good luck
Tinus