Arch Linux

schmidtbag

Member

From: NH, USA

Registered: 2011-02-08

Posts: 347

Can't play stereo sounds over SPDIF anymore *solved*

Yesterday I was trying out different media players to replace VLC (Not all DVDs will play, and if they do, they're a little stuttery) so I went to try out some different programs.  Being a KDE user, I tried stuff like Kaffeine and mplayer, only to find they either are as bad as VLC or they don't support 5.1 surround.

So I gave up on that, but the next time I turned on my computer I found that SPDIF didn't work in stereo anymore.  I edited my /var/lib/alsa/asound.state and tried changing the values to "true", but they keep resetting themselves to some huge number (over 100 digits long...).

Analog audio works fine, and surround sound files (like AC3) work fine over SPDIF, but nothing stereo related works.

I'd also like to point out phonon can play through SPDIF just fine.  I have no .asoundrc and I didn't before this problem occurred either.

So, how do I get SPDIF as my default audio source, including stereo channels?  Here's my aplay -L:
default:CARD=SB
    HDA ATI SB, ALC889 Analog
    Default Audio Device
sysdefault:CARD=SB
    HDA ATI SB, ALC889 Analog
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC889 Analog
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC889 Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC889 Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC889 Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC889 Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC889 Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC889 Digital
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
hdmi:CARD=Generic,DEV=0
    HD-Audio Generic, HDMI 0
    HDMI Audio Output
hdmi:CARD=Generic_1,DEV=0
    HD-Audio Generic, HDMI 0
    HDMI Audio Output

EDIT:
Looks like I should be all set for now, after some tinkering with the .asoundrc file.  There seriously needs to be better documentation for that - ALSA and Samba are of the worst documented pieces of software in all of linux.  They're amazing, but pointlessly difficult to configure because they don't tell you what you NEED in order to get the job done.  For the very few moments where the documentation will tell you what you need, it doesn't give you every option or descriptions of every option.  I'd gladly make a GUI tool for asoundrc but I don't understand it enough to do so.

Last edited by schmidtbag (2013-05-24 22:18:30)