Creative Live! 5.1 Digital with ALL speakers?

solatis

Hello,

I would like to ask, does anyone of you manage to be able to setup your dolby surround soundcard to use all speakers?

I have a Create Live! 5.1 Digital sound card with an analog dolby surround system... works perfectly under Windows after I install the drivers, before I install them, it just uses the front-left and front-right speaker only (no center speaker, no rear speaker and no subwoofer) ... just the same thing for Linux. And no Linux drivers for this card from creative either...

Anyone has any idea?
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Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com/

sa · Guru Joined: 10 Jun 2002 Posts: 450

if you are using analog out to your amp/speakers go into alsamixer to the last slider and mute that puppy(type 'm'). If you dont have alsa installed yet just

solatis · Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2002 12:27 pm Post subject:

And that will make my sound go out to all the 3 channels instead of just 1?
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Grtz,

Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com/

sa · Guru Joined: 10 Jun 2002 Posts: 450

yes!

Im sure there is a better (more thorough) tutorial for alsa somewhere. if my instructions dont make sense...

have fun...

oh ya, to get 5.1 to work you must recompile xine after alsa. I couldnt get mplayer to work with all 6 speakers. but xine does work nicely with 5.1...

cya,
sa

solatis · Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2002 12:01 pm Post subject:

What do you mean with all 6 speakers? You mean sound only comes out of 2 speakers, or you mean dolby surround simply doesn't work?

Because that's the thing I basically care for... not really that dolby surround works in all programs, but just that sound comes out of all speakers

And thanks for the tips, I understand quite well, I will reinstall gentoo this evening and will see

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Grtz,

Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com/

sa · Guru Joined: 10 Jun 2002 Posts: 450

yes all speakers work, even if dolby is not in use.

at least with xmms and ut2003-demo sound comes out of all speakers...
I havent tried much else.

solatis · Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2002 10:31 am Post subject:

Okay, and basically the trick is to mute the most right panel in alsa-mixer to make all speakers work, right?
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Grtz,

Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com/

sa · Guru Joined: 10 Jun 2002 Posts: 450

by muting the last slider, it tells the driver to output analog output, instead of digital output... you also might have to unmute the master volume and some other stuff, and adjust some volume levels.

have fun...

FruitCake · Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2002 7:20 am Post subject:

or you could just use the creative drivers http://opensource.creative.com/ which provide better sound qaulity and have been discussed numerous times before, specifically search for emu10k1 in a topic entitled something like 'Which 5.1 sound card to buy' there is a good coverage on how to get the live card working in there

sa · Guru Joined: 10 Jun 2002 Posts: 450

hmm, I am wondering why 5.1 doesn't work with alsa for the posters of that thread. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=12955
Its working here...

FruitCake, if you say the creative drivers have better sound, I will have to try them ;-)

thanks,
sa

sanity · n00b Joined: 19 May 2002 Posts: 39 Location: Iowa

really. Tweak it. Tweak it again.

Here's what I always have to make sure of:

Main volume is at 50% to prevent distortion.
PCM is at 50% to prevent distortion.
Surround sound and most of the controls after that (front,rear,etc, all except things like line in that you know you won't be using) are unmuted and at 100%.
Second to last control (has to do with surround) is unmuted and at 100%.

If you get a hiss, go through each and every control and try muting it and unmuting it to see if the hiss goes away.

Use the alsasound init script -- otherwise your settings are forgotten after a reboot.

Tell everything to use surround -- even things like xmms, if they have it. Stereo sounds better if it uses rear speakers.

Go through your manuals 3 or 4 times and make sure you have everything hooked up right. My speakers and soundcard both have wierd ideas of hooking things up -- and the sblive manual says nothing about stereo, which takes more tweaking to make work.
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TenPin · Guru Joined: 26 Aug 2002 Posts: 500 Location: Kansas City

http://basic-rip.co.uk/tenpin/linux_audigy_faq.html

paranode · l33t Joined: 06 Mar 2003 Posts: 679 Location: Texas

If you can live without the center channel, the kernel driver for emu10k1 is pretty good. It provides full front and rear output. I tried the emu10k1 driver from portage and I can't stand it. When you enable surround sound it sounds crappy and it echoes. It also distorts the sound. Plus I can tell that it drags my system down. I had a noticeable performance hit when I was using those drivers and it took a while for me to figure out what it was but it was that driver because taking it out has made things normal again. Just my 2 cents.
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