No NVidia Geforce 970 HDMI audio output to monitor

GManLinux · 2016-06-04 03:19:55

I have a fresh installation of Arch Linux and KDE Plasma on a newly rebuilt desktop, running an EVGA Geforce GTX 970 video card on a MSI Z170A SLI Plus motherboard. The audio input is to an Asus monitor with built in speakers, via an HDMI cable. All elements have been tested and are otherwise working. Also present is the Intel graphics chip built into the motherboard. Specifically, aplay -l returns:

card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC1150 Analog [ALC1150 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Starting with https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ad … chitecture and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ad … leshooting, and moving through the sundry lamentations of linux users around the internet, I worked out what I hoped would be a solution, creating the following /etc/asound.conf file:

pcm .!default {
type hw
card NVidia
}

ctl.!default {
type hw
card NVidia
}

Using the name field rather than the device number allowed KDE Plasma to recognize the one of the four NVidia devices appearing in aplay -l that is the proper audio output. Upon rebooting into KDE and entering the System Settings, Phonon lists 5 HDMI audio playback devices:

GM204 High Definition Audio Controller Digital Stereo (HDMI)
GM204 High Definition Audio Controller Digital Stereo (HDMI 2)
GM204 High Definition Audio Controller Digital Stereo (HDMI 3)
GM204 High Definition Audio Controller Digital Stereo (HDMI 4)
GM204 High Definition Audio Controller Digital Surround 7.1 (HDMI 4)

Encouragingly, all but the first are grayed out, and although there is also a live Built-in Audio Analog Stereo, it was a simple matter to move the preference of the HDMI up. Oddly enough, when I reached this stage, clicking on Test rewarded me with the dulcet tones of sound playing through the monitor speakers, but just the once. Further clicking of the Test button yields no sound, even if I have at it like a rat with an electrode stuck in my brain. And no other programs have yet resulted in sound from the speakers.

The "Audio Hardware Setup" tab also allows me to select GM204 High Definition Audio Controller as the sound card, and includes 10 profile options:

Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output
Digital Stereo (HDMI 2) Output
Digital Stereo (HDMI 3) Output
Digital Stereo (HDMI 4) Output
Digital Stereo 5.1 (HDMI) Output
Digital Stereo 7.1 (HDMI) Output
Digital Stereo 5.1 (HDMI 3) Output
Digital Stereo 7.1 (HDMI 3) Output
Digital Stereo 5.1 (HDMI 4) Output
Digital Stereo 7.1 (HDMI 4) Output

Trying each of these in turn again is likewise fruitless. Under Device Configuration, the only option for Sound Device is the appropriate GM204 selection for the HDMI output profile selected, and the Connector is noted to be HDMI / Display Port.

On the Audio Volume tab, Output Devices, GM204 High Definition Audio Controller Digital Stereo (HDMI) is listed, with a volume slider, but oddly is now grayed out, with an x over the speaker picture. This was not the case before. However, the Audio Volume on the Panel has a live slider for the same HDMI entry, and the volume on my one success was fine. I also ran unmutes in alsa to double check everything.

Anybody see anything I am missing? I know sound _can_ come out of the HDMI monitor speakers, KBE just seems wholly incapable of replicating the event. I would greatly appreciate any advice!

Thanks. G-

Last edited by GManLinux (2016-06-04 13:39:57)

JohnBobSmith · 2016-06-04 05:03:14

Welcome to the best penguin house in town!

Jokes aside, I have on minor gripe: KDE is KDE, not KBE. Anyhow, moving on...

As far as I know, you should never have to mess with /etc/asound.conf or whatever, and that it's usually better to make one in the home directory as ~/.asoundrc or whatever the wiki states. With that said, are you sure you've run alsamixer and checked everything? You may have to change the input audio card (F6) and you will probably need to enable sp/dif. If any of that worked we can make those changes permanent. Otherwise, you shouldn't have to run pulseaudio if you don't want to. But in my experience, doing so significantly helped with getting HDMI working (and I needed pulse for my games). See if using PULSEAUDIO will suit your needs. My plain ALSA knowledge is rather limited otherwise. Also, it could help to see if you can figure out why KDE is greying out options. My KDE knowledge is even less than my ALSA knowledge, so good luck there!

Last edited by JohnBobSmith (2016-06-04 05:05:25)

Wild Penguin · 2016-06-04 13:15:34

I have the same graphics card (more specifically 04G-P4-3975-KR) and I can say for a fact that HDMI output works here without problems.

Don't edit /etc/asound.conf file. No such editing was (and probably is) required, but if you really need to make changes, make them per-user in ~/.asoundrc, as pointed out by JohnBobSmith.

IIRC changing the sound output with plain ALSA was just a matter of changing the device in kde (or KDE Plasma, nowadays) system preferences. I was and still am able to divert the sounds also from applications that don't respect the KDE Plasma settings, such as Kodi, mpv and mplayer into the HDMI output (although the -ao alsa... syntax can be a bit daunting at first). Only thing that was (constantly) giving me gripes was Wine, which did not respect KDE Plasma settings nor the settings in winecfg, it seemed (and still sometimes has) a mind of it's own.

I tried to run until now without Pulseaudio with plain ALSA (since I have only one output device cabable sound card, and want digital output, and sometimes muck around with things such as timidity, mt32emu and need several software outputting simultaneously to a single device, not all of which play nicely with pulseaudio). However, with recent Plasma versions I was not able to get KDE5 to behave with plain ALSA. I gave up and installed pulseaudio, which seems to have matured and works quite well now. With it diveting output to any device I like, is much easier and can be done per-application. Pulseaudio has the bonus of choosing the output frequency of my card on-the-fly according to the audio being played back (44.1KHz or 48KHz, and if two streams are played at different mixing rates, the first one has priority and rest will be resampled). This is something I had trouble changing in ALSA even by hand (but succeeded in the end IIRC)! ALSA insists that the best playback rate is 48KHz (which I digress, 85% of my content is 44.1KHz). Most of the time unnecessary forced resampling doesn't matter, but when I hear (the rare) resampling artifacts, it gets quite annoying... I'm surprised no one is annoyed enough about this that it hasn't been fixed in plain ALSA to this day. Maybe veryone is using pulseaudio...

Bottom line: revert /etc/asound.rc. Move away ~/.asoundrc. Try to change settings in Plasma again. If that doesn't help, move away Plasma configs and start from a fresh desktop. If that still doesn't help, I'd give pulseaudio a shot as JohnBobSmith also suggested (install along pulseaudio plasma-pa, paswitch and pacmixer to help with controlling pulseaudio).

Last edited by Wild Penguin (2016-06-04 13:19:06)

GManLinux · 2016-06-04 18:27:27

I tried deleting my /etc/asound.conf file, though that leaves the system to default to the other card. Honestly, I had not tried installing and messing with Pulseaudio because I was loath to add yet another programming layer that could further muck things up. The current state of Linux audio is not impressing me.

With Pulseaudio, pactl list sinks returns:

Sink #0
State: SUSPENDED
Name: alsa_output.pci-0000_01_00.1.hdmi-stereo
Description: GM204 High Definition Audio Controller Digital Stereo (HDMI)
Driver: module-alsa-card.c
Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Owner Module: 6
Mute: yes
Volume: front-left: 47842 / 73% / -8.20 dB, front-right: 47842 / 73% / -8.20 dB
balance 0.00
Base Volume: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
Monitor Source: alsa_output.pci-0000_01_00.1.hdmi-stereo.monitor
Latency: 0 usec, configured 0 usec
Flags: HARDWARE DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY SET_FORMATS
Properties:
alsa.resolution_bits = "16"
device.api = "alsa"
device.class = "sound"
alsa.class = "generic"
alsa.subclass = "generic-mix"
alsa.name = "HDMI 0"
alsa.id = "HDMI 0"
alsa.subdevice = "0"
alsa.subdevice_name = "subdevice #0"
alsa.device = "3"
alsa.card = "1"
alsa.card_name = "HDA NVidia"
alsa.long_card_name = "HDA NVidia at 0xdf080000 irq 17"
alsa.driver_name = "snd_hda_intel"
device.bus_path = "pci-0000:01:00.1"
sysfs.path = "/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1"
device.bus = "pci"
device.vendor.id = "10de"
device.vendor.name = "NVIDIA Corporation"
device.product.id = "0fbb"
device.product.name = "GM204 High Definition Audio Controller"
device.string = "hdmi:1"
device.buffering.buffer_size = "352768"
device.buffering.fragment_size = "176384"
device.access_mode = "mmap+timer"
device.profile.name = "hdmi-stereo"
device.profile.description = "Digital Stereo (HDMI)"
device.description = "GM204 High Definition Audio Controller Digital Stereo (HDMI)"
alsa.mixer_name = "Nvidia GPU 71 HDMI/DP"
alsa.components = "HDA:10de0071,38422977,00100100"
module-udev-detect.discovered = "1"
device.icon_name = "audio-card-pci"
Ports:
hdmi-output-0: HDMI / DisplayPort (priority: 5900, not available)
Active Port: hdmi-output-0
Formats:
pcm

GManLinux · 2016-06-05 03:08:20

So to update, I reinstalled to get a clean KDE desktop, and try the alternate vlc audio backend, and now the System Settings crashes every time I try to tab over to Audio and Video. After wasting this much time on what should be simple and straightforward OS functions, Windows is starting to look a lot better. Not even a way to fix it now, as I cannot even get to the settings to change them.

Last edited by GManLinux (2016-06-05 04:24:28)

alex.theoto · 2016-06-05 06:10:46

@GManLinux please use 'code tags'.

Wild Penguin · 2016-06-05 18:39:21

GManLinux: I agree that the state of Linux audio is not quite user-friendly. It seems it is in a state of flux, and there are several layers and not all software agrees on which one to use (which means, if you use anything that did not come with your desktop environment, things may get fishy - or, sometimes just work. The older and more obscure projects / software one uses, the more difficult things may get...).

As with starting a clean KDE/Plasma desktop, I didn't actually mean re-installing (that is seldom what needs to be done in Linux, and usually actually achieves nothing). What you need to do, is move away ~/.config/plasma* and ~/.config/kde* (and if that doesn't seem to "reset" your desktop, it is best to start with a fresh home directory; I'm not sure where Plasma stores it's settings, bot Google may help if the aforementioned is not enough, if you are not willing to just reset the home dir). But maybe you already did that. I wouldn't change the backend from the default. I'm using "Phonon GStreamer", and changing the default output device works without problems here (and I can change the output device from the default for each application outputting sound from the mixer application).

As for plain ALSA, a small ~/.asoundrc is needed, I think, if you want to change the default sound card. I've screwed around with ALSA configs before, and the syntax is quite daunting and requires a lot of reading untill I got anything done! So from the top of my head, I can not tell how to make the change. Back when I used ALSA, I found it easier to change the device per-application.

That being said, the Linux audio system is still quite powerfull if one knows what you are doing, have very specific needs and are willing to learn how to configure it. But not so for the average desktop user, if the defaults don't work for some reason (OTOH, if I was looking for a distro to replace Windows, Arch would be one of the last one to try).

Last edited by Wild Penguin (2016-06-05 18:42:30)

Arch Linux

#1 2016-06-04 03:19:55

No NVidia Geforce 970 HDMI audio output to monitor

#2 2016-06-04 05:03:14

Re: No NVidia Geforce 970 HDMI audio output to monitor

#3 2016-06-04 13:15:34

Re: No NVidia Geforce 970 HDMI audio output to monitor

#4 2016-06-04 18:27:27

Re: No NVidia Geforce 970 HDMI audio output to monitor

#5 2016-06-05 03:08:20

Re: No NVidia Geforce 970 HDMI audio output to monitor

#6 2016-06-05 06:10:46

Re: No NVidia Geforce 970 HDMI audio output to monitor

#7 2016-06-05 18:39:21

Re: No NVidia Geforce 970 HDMI audio output to monitor

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