Hi guys!
I've been fighting with my (apart from that good working) PC now for weeks.
I am running on Kubuntu 11.04.

What I want sound simple to me:
5.1 audio via optical out and stereo analog input
(or even 5.1 analog and stereo analog)

the best I could get:
5.1 analog out, NO input.


what i tried:
4 different sound cards:

-internal HDA intel:
5.1 only analog, audio quality unacceptable. Jittering and digital noise.
tried to fix this in the alsabase.conf with no success.

-Nvidia GTX 4500, audio via HDMI
stereo works,
5.1 digital indicated, but leads to an output, that physically doesn't
exist...

-SoundBlaster Audigy2
no sound at all.

-Terratec Aureon 5.1 PCI
5.1 analog possible, but no input available.

_____________

So I kindof gave up on optical and the 5.1 HDMI out and just tried to get 5.1 analog out + 2.0 analog in to work. (sad!)


As I said, it 'worked' with the on-board HDA intel device, but the jittering...
So I installed the Terratec, set it to 5.1 out and used the on-board for analog in... Or should I say TRIED to use it..?!
It shows up, I can set it to stereo analog in, chose the input and... NOTHING. Looked throu all the settings in Phonon and the sound configuration, read stuff about asoundrc, got more confused...


Here my questions:

What is necessary to get 5.1 optical? Which card? Special drivers?

(how) can I work with two sound cards?

Where does the audio go to on my Nvidia, setting it to HDMI3, when it only has one?


I know, this is a lot of writing here, about sth. that should be so simple, but I seriously tried everything I could and just end up in tears
Any help appreciated!
All the best from Berlin


SwK

I managed to get one step further:

I installed gnome-alsa-mixer because I remembered, it has more settings then KMix.
Found out, that the input on my internal card was just musted, but there is no way to unmute via KMix... weird!

So, now I have 5.1 analog out through the Terratec card + stereo in through the internal.
Some success, but still dreaming of 5.1 optical...

Two suggestions that might just help. First, run alsamixer from a console - not the gui version. 'M' toggles mute.

Second - I'm using a Soundblaster X-Fi external card, usb. I haven't managed to achieve 5.1, but I do have two front and two read speakers working. What I did discover is that the backend chosen for Phonon is crucial - and there's no one answer. On this laptop I get results with GStreamer. When it was away for repair and I was working with the netbook it had to be VLC - in both cases I couldn't get any result with the 'wrong' backend.