NSI C-Media USB Sound Card installation

NSI USB 7.1 sound card comes with C Media Chip set

Windows

Run the setup in administrator mode. Open the application and select mode

Linux

1. Set USB sound card as as default

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

At the end of file, change the index from -2 to 0

# Keep snd-usb-audio from beeing loaded as first soundcard

options snd-usb-audio index=0

Note : Command to list devices

~$ aplay --list-devices

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****

card 0: Device [USB Sound Device], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]

 Subdevices: 1/1

 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

card 1: MID [HDA Intel MID], device 0: 92HD81B1C5 Analog [92HD81B1C5 Analog]

 Subdevices: 1/1

 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

card 1: MID [HDA Intel MID], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]

 Subdevices: 1/1

 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

2. Install ALSA and ALSA mixer if it's not present

Edit/create .asoundrc in your home directory

gedit ~/.asoundrc

Add the following

pcm.sndcard{

type hw

card 0

device 1

channels 6

}

3. Restart

4. Go sound settings and select your audio card. This was needed even if USB was configured by default.

  This settings was lost even when I remove aux cable from sound card.

5. Testing

For 5.1:

speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -l1 -twav

For 7.1:

speaker-test -Dplug:surround71 -c8 -l1 -twav

If it's not working, you might try following alsa's own guide:

http://alsa.opensrc.org/SurroundSound

And also this:

http://www.halfgaar.net/surround-sound-in-linux

Note however that many codecs require custom routing (ttables), the folk at #alsa on irc.freenode.org may be able to help in that case.