Complete mess of audio setup

schmidtbag · 2013-11-08 01:25:47

For almost a year now, I've had audio play through SPDIF to a 5.1 surround receiver. Both surround and stereo worked like a charm through 1 cable. I haven't bothered watching a movie on this system in nearly 2 months, but when I tried to today, I noticed the surround wasn't working. It wasn't just movies but .ac3 files too. Aside from being able to hear the difference, my surround receiver has a bright blue light on it that signifies when it's receiving 5.1 audio over digital, and it wasn't turning on. I do not have pulseaudio installed, because when using SPDIF, you don't really need to configure anything when using just ALSA. That being said, all analog channels have always been their defaults (so rear left/right, side left/right, and center/LFE are all by default set to front left/right channels).

But my problem gets weirder. Aside from SPDIF only playing in stereo, I can ONLY get surround sound out of analog! If I try playing stereo out of analog, it's a garbled noisy mess, but 5.1 channel files play just fine and in their correct channels. This makes no sense, since I have *never* been able to get surround sound to work out of analog in linux, and I didn't even touch anything.

What I think is going on is ALSA is somehow confusing the analog output with the digital output.

For some additional information:
* I'm running KDE 4.11.3 (perhaps the recently updated phonon has something to do with this?)
* Deleting the phonon settings file did not fix the problem
* In VLC, I have SPDIF as my main audio device
* In VLC, I tried using the "Use SPDIF when available" checkbox. Interestingly, the blue light on the surround receiver turns on when I do this, but I can't hear anything.
* I do NOT have an active .asoundrc file

Last edited by schmidtbag (2013-11-09 00:11:40)

schmidtbag · 2013-11-09 19:09:39

So I found out that VLC 2.1 is known to have surround issues with SPDIF; the problem doesn't exist in the previous version (I think 2.0.8?):
https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/8181
That ticket is supposedly closed, but its still affecting me. It applies to Windows users too. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what to do about it on linux. Think I should just wait it out or does anyone know a workaround?

Last edited by schmidtbag (2013-11-09 19:10:14)

HalosGhost · 2013-11-09 19:16:51

Have you looked into mpv? If you have mpv with a well-organized file hierarchy, you'll quickly forget all about the concept of a media library manager.

All the best,

-HG

schmidtbag · 2013-11-09 19:28:20

Hmm I like how small MPV is. Unfortunately, it isn't working, I get the following error:

Playing: %F
Cannot open file '%F': No such file or directory
Failed to open %F.


Exiting... (No files played)
Inconsistency detected by ld.so: dl-close.c: 771: _dl_close: Assertion `map->l_init_called' failed!

I'm guessing the real error is the ld.so. Any idea what package contains that?

Last edited by schmidtbag (2013-11-09 19:36:50)

HalosGhost · 2013-11-09 19:43:54

What happens when you pass it a valid file to play?

All the best,

-HG

schmidtbag · 2013-11-09 19:48:59

[ffmpeg/ac3] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
Detected file format: raw AC-3 (libavformat)
[stream] Audio (+) --aid=1 (ac3)
Creating non-video VO window.
[vo/vdpau] Compositing window manager detected. Assuming timing info is inaccurate.
Video: no video
[ffmpeg/ac3] Channel layout '5.1(side)' with 6 channels does not match specified number of channels 2: ignoring specified channel layout
Selected audio codec: ATSC A/52A (AC-3) [lavc:ac3]
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz stereo 2ch floatle
A: 00:00:09 / 00:00:09 (99%)


Exiting... (End of file)
Inconsistency detected by ld.so: dl-close.c: 771: _dl_close: Assertion `map->l_init_called' failed!

Perhaps it was supposed to quit automatically? But either way, it's still playing in stereo-only, and also the window that pops up is covered in artifacts.

HalosGhost · 2013-11-09 19:58:50

Okay, it looks like the file you passed it had a nine second duration which mpv got through and then exited (which is normal). It also looks like either you're not specifying the number of channels correctly or the file you're passing doesn't have the same number of channels as you're specifying.

As for the window created, it may be related to vdpau (which I haven't used in forever) being used, but mpv clearly says that it didn't detect any video.

Finally, I don't know what's going on with the ld.so problem (are you correctly and safely doing full system upgrades regularly?), but you may want to consider following mpv-git from the ALUR given that it is under heavy active development (and because rebuilding might help).

All the best,

-HG

Last edited by HalosGhost (2013-11-09 19:59:14)

schmidtbag · 2013-11-09 20:31:44

Aside from the glitchy window, if what I experienced is normal, I don't think I'm going to want to use MPV. One of the reasons I avoided mplayer and mplayer2 is specifically because I really don't feel like configuring such programs via a text file, especially when it generates a blank one. I also like having a configurable playlist and more playback controls directly on the GUI itself. One of the reasons I liked VLC so much is because it is (or was) a very capable program that let me do everything I wanted to do without having to reference a manual page, and it doesn't depend on other programs (MPV relies on command lines, file browsers, text editors, etc). MPV may be a very powerful and capable program but I find it too clumsy to use and too slow to configure. When it comes to media related programs, I don't have the patience to be setting up something like that by hand. It takes so little to make 1 mistake that breaks everything and not understand why. GUIs not only speed up the process of configuring a program but they reduce human error because they show everything you can do right in front of you and they let you know what is a valid value. A well-designed GUI will prevent you from making contradictory choices.

I'm fine with using text-based config files (I'm using Arch after all) but if there's 1 thing about linux I hate, it's configuring anything media related by hand. There's just simply too many paths you can take and it's NEVER clear which ones are the ones you want/need.

Last edited by schmidtbag (2013-11-09 20:35:17)

Arch Linux

#1 2013-11-08 01:25:47

Complete mess of audio setup

#2 2013-11-09 19:09:39

Re: Complete mess of audio setup

#3 2013-11-09 19:16:51

Re: Complete mess of audio setup

#4 2013-11-09 19:28:20

Re: Complete mess of audio setup

#5 2013-11-09 19:43:54

Re: Complete mess of audio setup

#6 2013-11-09 19:48:59

Re: Complete mess of audio setup

#7 2013-11-09 19:58:50

Re: Complete mess of audio setup

#8 2013-11-09 20:31:44

Re: Complete mess of audio setup

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