[linux-audio-dev] Writing PCM to left and right channel sperately?

Hello List, I'm new to audio programming and have problems finding the right solutions for the development I work on right now: I need to use the left and the right audio channel seperately. The device is an ARM based board with a AC97 soundchip. It seems to work with OSS so far and I did choose libsdnfile to open Soundfiles and get the PCM. As far as I learned the audio data is coded in one stream, one sample left, one sample right. Is there a way to separately fill the soundcard buffers with ALSA? The only solution I can think of right now is to recode the audio data to left only or right only and to use a library like esound to mix them together. Is this the right way to do such a thing? Any suggestions, pointers, hints are highly welcome. Greetings, Tobias