[MPlayer-users] sound blaster live! 24 external

[Fredrik Eriksson]

Papp Márton wrote:

> Hi Everybody!
>
> I have recently bought a Creative Sound Blaster Live! 24 External 
> sound card. It works fine with MPlayer under Linux in stereo mode. I 
> would like it to produce 5.1 surround sound, though. I simply cannot 
> make that happen. I tried many of the command line options I found in 
> manuals and mailing lists, but none of them worked. I would like to 
> use the sound card's optical output as an input to a DVD 
> player/aplifier. The dvd player has indicators showing how many 
> channels it receives through its optical input. I've been able to make 
> it work fine with other hardware, showing all channels are active.
>
> Could somebody tell me whether it is even possible to make it sound in 
> 5.1 surround mode with MPlayer?

This is probably a alsa problem, adding channels=6 to mplayer.conf (or 
-channels 6 to the command line) make mplayer use all channels, unless 
there is something wrong with your alsa configuration.

I found this on a google search: 
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Install_Creative_Sound_Blaster_Live_24-bit_external_(usb)

it is a guide how you set it up on gentoo, but even if you don't use 
gentoo there might be something usefull there.

Fredrik