How to set up your system for Surround Sound and fixing some sound issues. (Intermittant sound and stuttering can often be fixed in this way)

openalrc

The openalrc (found in your home directory, like ~/.openalrc) file is the simple key for this.

Here's one for reference:

# Contains user settings for OpenAL
# Goes in ~/.openalrc

# Use ALSA (also valid: sdl, native)
(define devices '(sdl))

# Four speaker surround with ALSA
(define speaker-num 4)
(define alsa-out-device "surround40:0,0")
#(define speaker-num 2)
#(define alsa-out-device "hw:0,0")

If you have 5 or 6 speakers, change speaker-num to match, and change the out-device to surround51. (Note that some games revert to stereo (2 channel) sound when more than 4 speakers are used - I do not know if this is the case with Scorched3d) The 0,0 specifies the hardware device, and should work for most people with only one sound card.

If you still experince trouble with the above setup, try define devices '(alsa)', but sdl tends to work better for most.