Since I’ve changed my strategy slightly on how to distribute audio to the house, I’ve needed to do some research on alsa.
Link
After coming across an article about house audio, someone mentioned the effects of pumping stereo audio to each zone…
Sound can get muddy if zones are playing the same music, lack of separation…
So the idea is to just put out mono audio to each zone. Make is easy since amplification and source becomes easier to manage.
A 5.1 surround sound card will give me 6 zones! I’m a little excited about this.

Figured out how the ttable command works (by example since documentation is non-existant);
ttable.[input from audio app].physical card output [mix ratio]
ttable.x.y z
for x, options are 0, 1 (for left and right)
for y, options are :0 – front left, 1 – front right, 2 – rear left, 3 – rear right, 4 – center, and 5 – LFE (subwoofer)
for z, option is a value from 0 to 1. 1 being 100% of that channel.

For me, I’ll have to define 4 distinct sound devices. each device will use on of the following:

Sound Device 0
ttable.0.0 0.5
ttable.1.0 0.5

Sound Device 3
ttable.0.3 0.5
ttable.1.3 0.5