EDIT:
This guide *should* work with these cards... however why you're still using 9.04 is beyond me...
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty®
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
EDIT: NOTE: P.S.: WHATEVER:
DO NOT follow this guide if you are on a later version than 9.04, as this is support is already included
---
Hi,
I installed Ubuntu 9.04 today (EDIT: and Linux Mint 7 a couple of days later)... and I was about to compile the half-baked official Creative X-Fi drivers for my X-Fi Music PCI card... their drivers always have some kind of issue so I checked Wikipedia for any news. It seems a S.u.S.E. developer has been working with Creative and ALSA, and suffice to say the 1.0.21 release of ALSA that came out a few hours ago has worked great for me with 5.1 support for these X-Fi cards.
I don't think it's going to harm to upgrade ALSA this way, it might be that 9.10 will come with this version in a months time (it currently has 1.0.20 which I haven't tried) and just override the process below anyway.
Step One
Upgrade ALSA to version 1.0.21
Run these commands as root! To work as root, key in this along with your password...
Then proceed...
Code:
apt-get -y install build-essential ncurses-dev gettext xmlto linux-headers-`uname -r`
mkdir -p /usr/src/alsa
cd /usr/src/alsa
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-1.0.21.tar.bz2
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/lib/alsa-lib-1.0.21.tar.bz2
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/utils/alsa-utils-1.0.21.tar.bz2
tar xjf alsa-driver*
tar xjf alsa-lib*
tar xjf alsa-utils*
cd alsa-driver*
./configure
make
make install
cd ../alsa-lib*
./configure
make
make install
ln -s libpanelw.so.5 /usr/lib/libpanelw.so
ln -s libformw.so.5 /usr/lib/libformw.so
ln -s libmenuw.so.5 /usr/lib/libmenuw.so
ln -s libncursesw.so.5 /lib/libncursesw.so
cd ../alsa-utils*
./configure
make
make install
Step Two
Reboot...
No really, go reboot... you need to.
Step Three
Check preferences...
- Go to your System | Preferences | Sound
- Change the default mixer tracks device to 'Creative X-Fi (Alsa mixer)'.
- Open Volume Control | Preferences
- Tick 'Center/LFE', 'Surround' and 'Side', then unmute each of them.
Step Four
Up mix anything stereo to 5.1...
If you've got a program that's 5.1 aware then it'll work as it should, however by doing this step anything that plays stereo (like the irritating Ubuntu system sounds) will be up mixed to 5.1 instead of just coming out of the front left and right!
- Hit Alt+F2 and run this...
- Paste in this stuff below, then save and quit gedit...
Code:
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "surround51"
slave.channels 6
route_policy duplicate
}
Step Five
Not really a step, I just think 5 steps sound better than 4...
Remember back in Windows there is that snooty little women who barks all around you in each speaker... she is back!
- Hit Alt+F2 and run this...
Code:
speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -l1 -twav
You should hear her come out of each of the 5 speakers, and probably a gagged version of her mumblings out of your sub woofer.
You'll also notice in your Hardware Drivers dialogue box, that it'll say the X-Fi Drivers 1.03 are activated... not sure why it does this - but it does happen as a result of doing this.
Please let me know how you get on... can't promise I'll know what to do when stuff goes wrong for you however!
Yes that's right popcorn, why? WHY NOT!
NOTE: I am finding that even if I unmute those extra 3 properties in the volume control, they are muted again upon login again - does anyone know a fix for this?
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