making alsa work with multi channels?

[sorressean]

Hello,
I've got a question. I'm using mplayer and alsa, and am trying to get it so that mplayer's volume is independant from the whole system--currently it lowers the volume of everything, which means that I end up losing volume for everything else, too.
I did the following, and now it's not letting me change the volume. It is also only working on one channel. Ideas would be awesome on what I'm doing wrong
.asoundrc:

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}
# softvol - Volume Control
pcm.softvol {
type softvol
slave.pcm "dmixer"
control {
name "mvol"
card 0
}
}
# dmixer:
pcm.dmixer {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 4096
rate 44100
format S32_LE
}
bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}

and in my ~/.mplayer/config:

ao=alsa:device=softvol
channels=2

your ideas would be really great at this point.
also, I have to do something like -af format=s32le when I run mplayer, because it gives a format 16 error and says it's dropping to default, then it exits. Any ideas why that is?
Thanks again,

[b2bwild]

I had the same problem long ago, but after that I switched to PulseAudio X_X