There is one annoying thing with MP3 files. They are stereo, and not surround compatible. Notice that when you have a 5.1 speaker system (or more), only the 2 front speakers are used to play the music.
I’ve got a Sound Blaster Audigy sound card running on my PC, and luckily it offers CMSS (Creative MultiSpeaker Surround) which allows me to duplicate my front channels music to all other speakers, creating a fake surround effect. It’s not really Dolby-like effects, but hey, it’s still better than having only 2 speakers playing my music.
What I really wanted was to have the same effect, but under Linux Mint, since I’m an avid fan of this distro. I thought it was already included somewhere, but alas no. I found that after browsing around in the control panel. The option could not be found.
My only solution was Google, and the answer came quite rapidly, although not from Linux Mint’s site or wiki or forum, but from Gentoo’s. At least it works, and it was very easy to implement. Read on…