I have a Creative soundblaster live 5.1 card with a set of Creative T5900
5.1 surround speakers for playing music or watching dvds and videos.

I want to be able to tailor my setup for my particular room acoustics and
taste and whether I am using the speakers or headphones. But I don't know
how to fine tune the balance between the speakers (using Kmix). Like change
the balance between the rear and front speakers or left and right or
increase the volume of just the centre speaker, and so on. I suppose what I
want is to be able to control each individual channel of the 5.1 sound and
have several profiles preset that I can switch between depending on whether
I am using headphones or the speakers. Is there a mixer app out there that
will enable me to do this sort of thing?

TIA

Allan Miller

allan miller wrote:
> I have a Creative soundblaster live 5.1 card with a set of Creative T5900
> 5.1 surround speakers for playing music or watching dvds and videos.
>
> I want to be able to tailor my setup for my particular room acoustics and
> taste and whether I am using the speakers or headphones. But I don't know
> how to fine tune the balance between the speakers (using Kmix). Like change
> the balance between the rear and front speakers or left and right or
> increase the volume of just the centre speaker, and so on. I suppose what I
> want is to be able to control each individual channel of the 5.1 sound and
> have several profiles preset that I can switch between depending on whether
> I am using headphones or the speakers. Is there a mixer app out there that
> will enable me to do this sort of thing?

The ncurses-based alsamixer can do this. I have a SB Live 5.1 card and
can tweak the volume of each channel (center, front, rear, LFE) and the
L-R balance of the two stereo channels (front, rear).

If you want to setup profiles, then take a look at amixer. It accepts
volume commands and so is easily integrated into simple 'profile' scripts.

--
Ben M.

> The ncurses-based alsamixer can do this. I have a SB Live 5.1 card and
> can tweak the volume of each channel (center, front, rear, LFE) and the
> L-R balance of the two stereo channels (front, rear).
>
> If you want to setup profiles, then take a look at amixer. It accepts
> volume commands and so is easily integrated into simple 'profile' scripts.
>
Thanks.

I had hoped there might have been something like the Creative setup utility
which is oriented to the user rather than requiring someone who knows the
technical aspects of sound cards which alsamixer/kmix does. But I am not
going to switch to Windows just to use my surround sound system.