SPDI/F passthrough to an external decoder

sDoky · 2008-10-03 21:20:32

Hi fellas, I have an Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value which I have always used in the proprietary shit called microsoft with this useful tool called spdif passthrough, which bypassed e.g. DTS or Dolby digital 5.1 to my decoder (it does not support analog connection) ever since I've had linux (wow, that's a long time!!) I sufficed with just 2.0 sound on my 5.1 system but now I feel like improving that. I have read this: http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/.asoundrc and thought of it's use in my case. Please help me, I might not understand the use quite well and maybe this is not the right way but I have said to myself that I would deal with this problem. Thank you...

iggy · 2008-10-03 22:55:20

did you tried to enable passtrough in totem?

i'm the owner of an audigy 2 zs, don't know if the value version supports it too!

BlackIkeEagle · 2008-10-03 23:08:55

most of the time you only need passtrough for movies,

so for xine-lib based players you have an option called passthrough (correct me if i'm wrong)

for mplayer you can do:

# mplayer -afm hwac3

this will pass your dts and ac3 streams directly through your optical cable

or add the following line to your ~/.mplayer/config file
afm=hwac3

afonic · 2008-10-05 00:07:03

AC3 and DTS passthough works great here with both mplayer and VLC, you can find the options needed to enable it in each player's GUI settings.

So if you have IEC958 entries in alsamixer, you should unmute them and set the source as "PCM". Make sure you read this in case it does not work:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ALS … s_not_work

Now if your audio card supports it you will not only passthrough AC3 but also hear all the sounds (mp3s from example) from the optical output. (you may have to configure your DE for all apps to work though)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-10-03 21:20:32

SPDI/F passthrough to an external decoder

#2 2008-10-03 22:55:20

Re: SPDI/F passthrough to an external decoder

#3 2008-10-03 23:08:55

Re: SPDI/F passthrough to an external decoder

#4 2008-10-05 00:07:03

Re: SPDI/F passthrough to an external decoder

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