sb live! & ALSA questions

[nehalmistry]

Hi,

i have asked everywhere with no reply, this is my last resort:

1) How do i activate the 12db front boost that you can with
the creative OSS drivers using:

emu-dspmgr -B on

2) how do i get rear speakers working, i have tried everything
to no avail... no sound comes out at all.. i have played with
all vol controls...

3) (could be related to question 1)
in any linux drivers the bass gives me a thumping sound, its
not distorted but just doesn't sound smooth like in windows,
i tried using many different mp3 players so its not software ...
and this happens in ALSA drivers (it may have happened
in creative oss drivers, cant remember though) ... if i turn
the bass down it goes away, but i then i get low bass..
i have set wave volume to 40 (seems most optimum for me)
and have pcm and master volume to 100% ... this should give
me high distortion but i guess its because 12db boost is off

once i get these things fixed i'll be mostly satisfied with live's performance
under linux (off course EAX isn't supported but that certainly
should not be a high priority atm)

[leech]

First I have to have a HUGE grin on this I looked everywhere myself for this and finally found out. In fact if you have a 5.1 Sblive then it'll even support the center speaker :-)

If you have Debian this will be easier.....'apt-get install gnome-alsamixer' It's even already ported to GTK+2

RedHat 8 link

http://rpmfind.net/linux/freshrpms/redhat-8.0/gnome-alsamixer/

After you install this little gem, make sure the option "SBLive Analog/Digital Output Jack" is unchecked! This will give you sound to your center speaker, and the surround speaker sliders are there as well.

With question number one, it should be on here as well, if you can figure out what the other controls are for. Play around with them a bit.

Hope that helps out a lot though.

Leech

[nehalmistry]

as you can see from my signature, i use neither debian nor redhat, but slackware

but anyways all mixers are the same so no point getting gnome-alsamixer, so i tried alsamixer and muted:
SBLive Analog/Digital Output Jack
then i increased volume of 'wave surround' and i heard sound from rear speakers (i only have 4 speakers btw) thx for getting that for me...

one problem with that though, the PCM volume control nor the Master volume control controls volume of rear speakers (only wave surround) so there is no way to simultaneously change front/rear ... it should be the PCM vol control... it may have something to do with routing, although testing isn't easy since (afaik) all of that is hardcoded into the source and can't be changed on-the-fly (i could be wrong though)

even if PCM doesnt control rear speakers master volume *definitely* should

as for the 12db boost, i have tried many times all volume controls, no luck at all, i have muted, unmuted many things with no luck at all...

[leech]

Alsa is a funky beast. Sorry, wasn't paying attention, I was tired as crap when I posted it. It is kind of irritating that you have to change the rear speaker volume seperate from the front. But then again, perhaps it'd be possible to hack a mixer so that it locks the two?

Leech