Arch Linux

Zarcjap

Member

Registered: 2011-06-28

Posts: 29

[CLOSED] sound over hdmi and optical

Ok I know sound of hdmi is a pain for everyone but I've have been all over the wiki and Google and have yet to get mine working! The weird thing is... sound works in XBMC. I got movies with 5.1 sound and 2.0 sound to work as well as music and everything else (except sound effects on menu selections but i can live with them) by setting the audio device to Optical/Coax, speaker config to 5.1, enabling DD AC3 capable and setting both audio ouput device and passthrough output device both to hdmi. However it ONLY works in XBMC. I'm trying to get some emulators working and it doesn't work in them. it doesn't work in an lxde environment either or when I run:

speaker-test -c 6

If I can just get sound working over hdmi I would be happy, If I can get it to work over hdmi and the optical out both that would be even better (although I have a feeling that'll just make things harder).
Here's my soundcards listed  with "cat /proc/asound/modules"

 1 snd_hda_intel
 2 snd_hda_intel

Here is my aplay -L ouput:

null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
pulse
    PulseAudio Sound Server
hdmi:CARD=Generic,DEV=0
    HD-Audio Generic, HDMI 0
    HDMI Audio Output
sysdefault:CARD=SB
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Digital
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

I can get "speaker-test -D surround51:SB -c 6" to work but it's analog through 3 different 3.5mm jacks which apart from not being ideal, can't be hooked up to my surround sound system if I wanted it to.
Whenever I run "speaker-test -D iec958:SB -c 6" or "speaker-test -D hdmi:Generic -c 6" I get:

speaker-test 1.0.25

Playback device is iec958:SB
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 6 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Channels count (6) not available for playbacks: Invalid argument
Setting of hwparams failed: Invalid argument

(obviously for the hdmi the playback device line reads hdmi:generic but otherwise they're the same)

I've been all over the alsa page of the wiki. When I tried the settings under https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Al … DIF_Output they were already correct.

To anyone who's bothered to read all this ( I sorry it's so long I'm just trying to be thorough) Thank you!
If anyone has any clue what I can try to fix this I would be forever grateful.

Edit: Well it looks like all that messing around I did last night trying to fix things only made it worse. Now the sound in XBMC doesn't work either.

Last edited by Zarcjap (2012-03-21 12:33:48)

lightandshadow

Member

Registered: 2012-03-18

Posts: 8

Re: [CLOSED] sound over hdmi and optical

Hi!

Funny thing is:
I have the exact opposite problem. I have also connected via optical, same settings as you have (by coincidence more or less) and have the menu clicking sounds plus perfect sound when using mplayer, aplay or somesuch - but no sound when playing music or video from within xbmc.

I would be grateful if you could provide your .asoundrc or comparable configuration info.

Regards,
lightandshadow

Army

Member

Registered: 2007-12-07

Posts: 1,784

Re: [CLOSED] sound over hdmi and optical

I'm pretty new to the hdmi sound stuff and it doesn't seem to work so far. I don't own a television, I only run my external monitor via hdmi without audio, so it's hard for me to test anything, but I'm willing to join the discussion to get this to work.

lightandshadow

Member

Registered: 2012-03-18

Posts: 8

Re: [CLOSED] sound over hdmi and optical

Hi!

I spent the day asking friend google, browsing the arch wiki, ubuntu wiki and xbmc wiki.
Lastly, I made it work. I have to admit that I don't know why and don't actually understand a thing of what I did, it was trial and error. However, here is what I did:

• installed alsa-oss (probably irrelevant)

• set the audio output settings in xbmc to "Audio output"="Optical/Coax", "Audio output device"="Defaults" and "Passthrough output device"="hdmi".

• used the following as my .asoundrc

pcm.dmixer {
  type dmix
  slave {
    pcm "hw:0,3" 
    rate 44100 
  }
}

pcm.!default {
   type hw
   card 1
}

That's it. In case you are a sound guru willing to share your wisdom or else trying to make it work like I did, you might want some more info. Here you go.

Output of "cat /proc/asound/modules":

 0 snd_hda_intel
 1 snd_hda_intel

Output of "aplay -L":

null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
pulse
    PulseAudio Sound Server
hdmi:CARD=Generic,DEV=0
    HD-Audio Generic, HDMI 0
    HDMI Audio Output
sysdefault:CARD=SB
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Digital
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

Output of "aplay -l":

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: ALC892 Digital [ALC892 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Hope it helps anyone out there. In case I stumble upon further problems regarding this hack, I'll post them here.

Regards
lightandshadow

qubodup

Member

Registered: 2008-01-19

Posts: 66

Re: [CLOSED] sound over hdmi and optical

Glad it worked out! (Every sound problem solved on Linux makes me a tiny bit happier...)

Please add "[Solved]" to the beginning of the title of this thread (the first post) so that others with similar problems know that it's worth reading this thread.

Cheers

Army

Member

Registered: 2007-12-07

Posts: 1,784

Re: [CLOSED] sound over hdmi and optical

@qubodup, lightandshadow isn't the original poster, so this thread isn't solved!

Zarcjap

Member

Registered: 2011-06-28

Posts: 29

Re: [CLOSED] sound over hdmi and optical

Hey guys! I'd posted this about a month ago and honestly forgot about it until I got an email that someone had posted on it. I haven't been using my Arch box much and the sound is still broken I'm going to try out some of the settings lightandshadow used to fix his tomorrow and see if that helps, and then I'll be posting about the results

Edit: Turns out I'm having a ton of other problems now that keep causing it to freeze up and just act all glitchy. I think I'm just going to close this tread and reinstall Arch.

Last edited by Zarcjap (2012-03-21 12:33:26)