alsa rear speaker weirdness

[<debuser@platinum.globalmart.com>]

I have a sound blaster live soundcard. I previously had alsa working
properly with the alsa drivers from woody. However, I recompiled to a
newer kernel and so I needed to download the alsa source and recompile
that too. I tried the alsa source from woody package, but it was an older
version and didn't want to compile on my system, so I downloaded the
source from alsa-project.org. I have it working now, but the volume
control on my various apps (xmms, realplayer) has no effect. When I run
gamix, the control that does have an effect on the volume is the "rear"
control, not "pcm" as would be expected. Any clues what the problem is?

Thanks,

Gerry