I was looking at the X540 in the store today, and remarked to my wife how I would like to get that for my birthday in mid-January … Her comment was we live in a small apartment and that would blast out the neighbours … was not our current 2.1 good enough ? < sigh > so no 5.1 system for me YET … (but I have not given up).
Still, in the mean time, I most interested in seeing how you succeed with this.
The best thing, to do, is really go thru your mixer with a “fine tooth comb”, being very logical in how you change settings, and take notes as required to track what you tested.
sound-test should work. Try a different sound test. …
Try this:
speaker-test -c2 -l5 -twavnote the “-c2” means you are testing two channel sound. Change that to “-c6” and its a good test for 5.1 channel sound. The “-l5” means the ladies voice saying “Front left”, “Front right” should occur 5 times. If that is too long you can reduce it to “l1”, but that does not give much time to play with one’s mixer. You can increase it to “l10” to play with your mixer a lot.
Don’t forget to move up both PCM and master volume.
If the speaker test does not work as a regular user, but does work with ‘sudo’ (ie with root permissions) then add your regular user to group audio and try again. There is guidance here for that: SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - openSUSE
I do not think you should configure a “model” in .asoundrc. Instead a “model” is typically applied to /etc/modprobe.d/sound file.
But when I look at the diagnostic script I see two sound devices.
- Sound card-0 - CA0106 (Creative Labs Audigy) 04:02.0 on IRQ-18
- Sound card-1 - ICH6 (AD1980 - AC’97) 00:1e.2 on IRQ23
When I search on your AD1980 (motherboard audio ? ) I get:
Search results - AlsaProject
which indicates it is supported in alsa, with some recent updates in the 1.0.18 alsa driver. I did a search in the ALSA-Configuration.txt file for 1.0.18 of alsa and I found no entries for an AD1980 of a custom model, so I assume that is not necessary.
Reference your audigy card, I do note this guidance:
[Solution] Creative Audigy 1/2 + 11.0 + KDE/GNOME + ALSA - openSUSE Forums](http://forums.opensuse.org/hardware/386773-solution-creative-audigy-1-2-11-0-kde-gnome-alsa.html)but having said that, it looks to me from your diagnostic script that there are problems with your sound, as there is no mixer showing.
I’m curious about your dmesg output. Can you (after a fresh reboot) paste into a gnome terminal or a kde konsole:dmesg > dmesg.txt && curl -F file=@dmesg.txt nopaste.com/aand post here the output URL it provides.
Can you provide the output of:
rpm -qa | grep alsa
rpm -qa | grep pulse #checks to see if you forgot any
rpm -q libasound2
uname -a
cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound
cat .asoundrc
Also, as noted, I do not have a 5.1 surround system, so this is really the blind leading the blind, or the blind leading someone who actually has the system. If you wish “expert” advice, then if I were you, I would start “hanging out” IRC channel #alsa. In particular ask users “wishie” and “gnubian” to see if they can help you setup your 5.1 sound. They live in different parts of the world, so you may need visit 1/2 dozen times, at different times of the day, before you manage to find them.
While waiting to reach them, you could brush up on this page, which gives some guidance for creating a .asoundrc file.
Playing stereo on surround sound setup (Howto - ALSA wiki
If any thing that I stated above reads like “gobbly gook”, then please ask for an explanation, and I’ll do the best I can to explain, with the understanding that I do not have a 5.1 surround system myself, … I’m only an interested observer who hopes to be able to convince his wife to change her mind. 
…
Good luck, and PLEASE, a personal request. Keep us appraised of your progress/success, as I am truly interested in this hardware.
