Comment 1 for bug 159024

I've had trouble getting dmix and 5.1 surround sound to work for the longest time on my nForce4 based onboard sound card. Changing .asoundrc to the attached file finally fixed it.
I'd actually suggest a graphical utility to set up the .asoundrc file, as it was a bit of trial and error at first to figure out how to setup the routing tables correctly - mainly because documentation on .asoundrc is sparse. What I finally ended up doing was running speaker-test -c6 repeatedly, figuring out which route destination corresponded to which speaker hooked up to my computer, and setting up the routes one by one.
A utility to do this would be nice. Also, if the installer could choose from a set of routing tables and dmix configurations for recognized sound cards, and build .asoundrc correspondingly, most of the problems people are having with getting dmixed surround sound out of the box may be eliminated...