Arch Linux

Elfo

Member

Registered: 2010-10-19

Posts: 25

HDMI Audio

I apologize if I've missed this somewhere in a post.

I just installed Arch on my computer, and I'm attempting to run the audio through the speakers on the monitor. My soundcard is an ATI Radeon 4200, which is onboard the motherboard. I've installed the base xf85-video-ati drivers, and visually stuff seems to be working well. The output of lscpi and aplay are as follows:

lspci|grep Audio
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
01:05.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RS880 Audio Device [Radeon HD 4200]


aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: VT1708S Analog [VT1708S Analog]
  Subdevices: 2/2
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: VT1708S Digital [VT1708S Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: ATI HDMI [ATI HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

RobertMe

Member

From: The Netherlands

Registered: 2010-07-04

Posts: 45

Re: HDMI Audio

Can you get sound by manually specifying the device to use? For example aplay -D hw:1,3 /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Left.wav or using mplayer, mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=1.3 /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Left.wav. If that gives you any sound it's just a matter of setting the default device using /etc/asound.conf (system wide) or ~/.asoundrc (user specific)
A lot of useful information can be found on these to pages:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/DigitalOut
http://alsa.opensrc.org/.asoundrc

Elfo

Member

Registered: 2010-10-19

Posts: 25

Re: HDMI Audio

Unfortunately, neither seems to give me any sound.

EDIT: Well, after ratcheting the volume aaaaalll the way up,

aplay -D plughw:1,3 /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Left.wav

gives a very quiet sound. I can't make out Front or Center, just a "whoomp".

Last edited by Elfo (2010-10-20 01:44:25)

Elfo

Member

Registered: 2010-10-19

Posts: 25

Re: HDMI Audio

Alright, using:

speaker-test -c2 -twav -Dplughw:1,3

I get the following output:

speaker-test 1.0.23

Playback device is plughw:1,3
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
WAV file(s)
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 64 to 16384
Period size range from 32 to 8192
Using max buffer size 16384
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 4096
was set buffer_size = 16384
 0 - Front Left
 1 - Front Right
Time per period = 2.727021
 0 - Front Left
 1 - Front Right
Time per period = 3.067194
 0 - Front Left
 1 - Front Right

The very first "Front Left" is quiet, barely discernible as noise. Every other "Front Left/Right" is loud and clear. However, this doesn't seem to be translating into my gnome desktop. Hope this helps :\

Elfo

Member

Registered: 2010-10-19

Posts: 25

Re: HDMI Audio

Alright, with more googling, I stumbed across gstreamer-properties. I've now selected the HDMI channel within gnome, and I have sound at full blast! However, the volume control doesn't affect the sound level, I'm guessing it's linked to a different channel, even though the preferences are set to HDMI.