Arch Linux

UglyBob

Member

Registered: 2015-11-29

Posts: 54

Need noob help with alsa

I have a HTPC with XBMC and retroarch on. I had troubles before with getting good emulator sound quality with pulseaudio, so I decided to use only alsa this time. I made it simple so when I start retroach (via emulatorstation) I kill kodi temporarily (as it hogs the audio device) and let retroarch run by itself. After exiting retroarch I restart kodi. It worked fine for a while, but today I get no sound from retroarch, only in xbmc. I haven't changed anything, my .asoundrc looks as it always has:

pcm.!default {
    type plug
    slave {
        pcm "hdmi_hw"
    }
}

pcm.hdmi_hw {
        type hw
        card 0
        device 3
        channels 6
}

I can't swear at it, but I think something changed with my audio devices though. It looks like this now:

$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC269VC Analog [ALC269VC Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC269VC Digital [ALC269VC Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

As you can see, the first one as I always use have 0/1 subdevices, I'm guessing this means it can't be used? What could have changed this is that is the case? I tried changing my settings to device 7 instead and that seems to give me sound. But I'm guessing that's not really the way to do it. Also I don't really understand why I have 3 hdmi devices with only one physical hdmi? Any help explaining some basic stuff to a noob would be much appreciated...