I'm running R5F1 on a Celeron 2.6ghz with a Sound Blaster Live DE 5.1 pci card.
I've been trying to get 5.1 surround sound working through xine, but at present for some reason I can only seem to be getting the rear channels to play through both front and rear speakers. So I get various ambient sound effects and some music, but no talking etc when I play DVDs through xine. The stereo settings work fine somehow, it's just 5.1 settings that are mixed up.

running speaker-test plays the sound correctly (though silent for center and LFE), but xine seems unable to do so.

I've checked my alsa and xine settings and tried numerous configurations but it keeps coming out the same.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem? Any ideas how to correct this?

I ran xine from the desktop and used alsamixer to figure out the channels - it seems that xine (or alsa??) is sending the rear channel through the PCM device as well as the Surround device.

Not sure how this happens or where - xine or alsa? - the confusion occurs...

As I said, I'm using the Soundblaster Live! 5.1 DE card - researched this to see if there are any chipset peculiarities, found no indication of such.

Ideas?

anyone, anyone?

re-installed, updated alsa drivers to latest release...and viola!

And not just violas, also trumpets, flutes and other musical instruments as well as voices and sound effects in perfect 5.1 surround.

I feel shame for not figuring out the issue though...