SB Live! working on ALSA & 10.0 OE...

[juanchor]

Ermmm... well I know this is a well-known issue, and the solution, after googling a lot and reading these forums -and others -, was "go to some mixer, i.e. alsamixer, mute the last control, "SB Live Analog/Digital Output Jack, then turn up the wave surround to control your rear speakers volume". Ok, I know this worked for me with mandrake 9.0 and my good ol' SB Live! 1024. But it died recently - oh why??-, and I bought an OEM SB Live! 5.1 Digital. The 4.1 setup (analog BTW) works fine under... that OS that starts with W hehehe

 

Under Mandy 10.0 and ALSA, it works, but no output from the rear speakers, just the normal "hiss" when there is no sound playing. I tried the mixer trick but no luck, In xmms with the ALSA plugin the rear speakers keep silent. I tried the commands:

 

aplay -D front xxxx.wav

aplay -D rear xxxx.wav

 

The first one played ok through the front speakers. The other just silent as always.

 

Any ideas?

[iphitus]

Open alsamixer, check all the entries and that any appropriate ones are not only un muted but are also turned up.

 

This post looks like it has some sort of configuration that might help:

http://www.linuxsa.org.au/pipermail/linuxs...ber/063681.html

 

Googling i am finding a lot of links to an 'emu-tools' package. Maybe this will include something to hep you setup your speakers.

[juanchor]

Thanks, but I have checked like 1 thousand times the alsamixer controls and they seem set ok. My wave surround is even at 100% volume, and the Analog/Digital Output jack is muted as it should be. I can hear everything from the front and sub speakers but nothing from the rear ones. I have touched nearly every switch up and down and no way.

I have googled quite a bit too and the emu-tools look like... they are OSS only.

 

Thanks anyway :)

[zero0w]

Search for this ALSA GUI mixer:

 

http://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/sear...ry=alsamixergui

 

This works for others as I know since Mandrake 9.

[juanchor]

Nope, AlsamixerGUI doesn't work for me either. I have done nearly everything possible. I even switched to the OSS emu10k1 driver... no rear output and pulled up the Ogain Slider (or was it Igain? I pulled them all! :lol:)in kmix.

I have right now upgraded my kernel from 2.6.3-7 to 2.6.3.14 but I've got the same problems: no rear speaker output and my wacom tablet doesn't work quite right... but that's another story. It's even worse, because having 2.1 sound is ok while having to mess with modprobe at start to get my tablet to work like an "absolute coords mouse" is quite annoying. I've read that's related to the fact that the kernel loads the usbmouse module, which it shouldn't. I'll open another post for that

[mikewho]

i had same problem and few others....

 

try setting other sliders proper - there are 2 sets of sliders for the 5.1 setup and few config ones at the right end of the mixer (at my mdk10+alsa they are on the right ;) )

 

one is for the PCM sound, the other is for something else (just a guess: the built in DolbyDigital h/w decoder)

 

after i launched all speakers i had problems with getting the channels sound like they supposed

 

when i changed volume, front balance changed, same thing happend when i changed the centeral and sub channel vol.

 

what i noticed is that there are few configuration sliders i couldnt get what they do

 

try the 2 last sliders - one turns on/off the 4-channel surround - my guess to get it work with 5.1 it should be off

 

2nd is for phase inversion filter, its for the dolby surrond rear effect (not needed when 4.x and 5.x setup - must be off

 

now i've got a Monster Sound MX300 sound card working on 2.0 setup, but i still have the SBL!5.1 and will get it back inside my PC as soon as i collect some info on setting it up with alsa :D if you find some good tools/soft to get SBL!5.1 work at MDK like it is working on (bad word, starting with W, 7-letters)

[mikewho]

please dont kill me with your lought....

 

at the mixer there is a setting called SB Live Digital Out

in some mixers it is not shown - try the alsamixer make it [OFF]

it worked in one of my cases, some time ago i had some other problems

 

still dont know what are the EMU10k1 slider - you know?

 

[mikewho]

if its the mixer setting to blame for no rear out try setting up this volume settings im sending you

 

how to get them to your mixer? as root type alsactl -f thisfile restore

st.state

[tyme]

i suggest using amixer in a terminal and looking through all the settings there to adjust the volume. i had to do this with my audigy to get rear speakers working.

 

as a side note, a while ago i had a problem of not getting any output from my rear speakers. i thought forever this was a driver/volume problem. after trying to fix this, i eventually found out that the problem was actually that the board in my subwoofer had gone bad and was no longer transferring the rear speaker from the input out to the speakers. i checked this by switching the input for the rear speakers to the input for the front speakers. just a thought, check and make sure it's a volume/driver problem, you know ;)