How to setup 5.1 surround sound in puppy2a

[dominic]

Hi, i've been trying to setup the surround sound, and i found a small bit of info that seems to be enough to do it, it's from the gentoo wiki, its slightly modded because at the moment, puppy2 doesn't have all the user configuration files for ALSA (that baffled me, i spent ages looking for the little blighters, only to realise there arn't mandatory for stereo speakers so they probably wouldn't be in puppy2a)

So here goes:

Duplicating across all channels

To have the sound from mp3s and other stereo sources duplicated across all channels, not just front and rear, use your sound config file (For puppy, you need to create this file, simply navigate to ~ or to etc (for a universal setting, it doesn't really matter as user accounts don't really apply to puppy.) Create a new file called .asoundrc) like this:

pcm.!dmix {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
channels 6
period_time 0
period_size 512
buffer_time 0
buffer_size 1024
}
}
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmix"
slave.channels 6
route_policy duplicate
}

This will make the sound come from your subwoofer as well as the smaller speakers in a 5.1 set. 5.1 streams are unaffected. If the sound messes up try

period_size 1024
buffer_size 8192

Remember to use alsamixer to unmute and turn up the volume on at least 'Master', 'PCM', 'Surround', 'Center' and 'LFE'; and also to change 'Channel' to 6ch from 2ch. Mute 'Duplicate'

Right, this should work, but I just thought i would say, i havn't got it working, but that besause i use the nForce2 sound chip on my board, which im sure you all know, nvidia currently only has basic 8bit sound drivers for. However i have managed to get sound out of 4 of my speakers with that setup and playing with alsamixer.

Could someone with another card please check it works? I think it should.

Thanks

Dom