Getting a 5.1 sound card to work.

[setakht]

Ok I've read just about every post about CMI sound cards and audigies and all that, but my questions still haven't been answered. I have an audigy because i use it for sound fonts in windows. I was really happy with it in linux as well with the creative OSS drivers. However I recently broke the front out jack on the back of it somehow, so now I'm looking to get a new sound card.

Now I have 2 CMI 8738 boards laying around the house that i've tried both alsa and oss drivers with. The problem is I get no subwoofer output or center speaker for that matter on anything, while I got it in EVERYTHING with the creative OSS drivers (even mp3s, just like the creative windows drivers).

I've also been looking at the Game Theatre XP by Hercules, which is powered by dual Crystal CS4280 chips, which alsa says it supports. I like the breakout box that it sports, but I'm wary about it in gentoo.

My setup consists of the sound card going into a 500 watt 5.1 digital receiver out to 5 speakers and a powered sub (home theater basically) so I'd like something that sounds good. So my questions are:

1. Has anyone been able to get real true 5.1 (with sub) working with the CMI 8738 (the wire switch trick won't work with me, not with my amp/speaker setup).

2. What's the status with ALSA on the Game Theater XP...Ie has anyone gotten 5.1 working with it, full range 5.1.

I'd rather buy/use one of these cards that buy another audigy, because of the cost and the fact that the audigy digital out is proprietary, and the fact that i don't need creative sound font support (kmidi/timidity does it). Any help would be apprectiated.

matt

[Moofed]

I wrote on these boardds and on the alsa mailing list about getting 5.1 sound with a 8738, but never got any useful help.
I did manage to get 5.1 with the oss drivers while playing a dvd in xine. Make sure to set channels to 6 in the kernel config. Mplayer would mess up and switch the channels around if you moved the window, not very pleasant, but xine worked great for 5.1 sound.
The oss drivers did not, however, work fine for spdif. I wanted to play a cd using the internal digital connection and it seemed impossible with oss, so I switched to alsa.
According to the alsa cvs mailing list, the multichannel sound has been fixed for the cmipci driver, but I haven't confired this since it isn't in the latest release of alsa, and hence no ebuild either. But, it sounds like cmipci surround sound should work under alsa now.
Of course, Im talking about analog output, I've never touched digital out myself. I have have heard that ac3 passthru works,
Good luck, Dan