I've been following your discussion and I am sure it applies to me. However, for some reason, in ALSAMixerGUI, the IEC958 Optical Raw slider and the SB Live Analog Digital Output Jack slider are both not operational. I have no idea why.

The results of my aplay -l are:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Live [SBLive! Value [CT4780]], device 0: emu10k1 [ADC Capture/Standard PCM Playback]
Subdevices: 32/32
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
Subdevice #7: subdevice #7
Subdevice #8: subdevice #8
Subdevice #9: subdevice #9
Subdevice #10: subdevice #10
Subdevice #11: subdevice #11
Subdevice #12: subdevice #12
Subdevice #13: subdevice #13
Subdevice #14: subdevice #14
Subdevice #15: subdevice #15
Subdevice #16: subdevice #16
Subdevice #17: subdevice #17
Subdevice #18: subdevice #18
Subdevice #19: subdevice #19
Subdevice #20: subdevice #20
Subdevice #21: subdevice #21
Subdevice #22: subdevice #22
Subdevice #23: subdevice #23
Subdevice #24: subdevice #24
Subdevice #25: subdevice #25
Subdevice #26: subdevice #26
Subdevice #27: subdevice #27
Subdevice #28: subdevice #28
Subdevice #29: subdevice #29
Subdevice #30: subdevice #30
Subdevice #31: subdevice #31
card 0: Live [SBLive! Value [CT4780]], device 2: emu10k1 efx [Multichannel Capture/PT Playback]
Subdevices: 8/8
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
Subdevice #7: subdevice #7
card 0: Live [SBLive! Value [CT4780]], device 3: emu10k1 [Multichannel Playback]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0


...which is weird because there is no IEC958 listing as for the nForce. I'm confused. Any ideas?

FYI: The results of playing the WAV file were:

:/home/ta # aplay -D mixed-digital COFFEE1.WAV
aplay: test_wavefile:731: can't play not PCM-coded WAVE-files

You (Xplosion) said it was a file format issue, so I didn't know if these results were significant or not.

X,

Here is the story. I setup both Xine and MPlayer the same way with the same results. I already had "hw:0,2" in all of the possible slots in Xine, but I had "5.1" as the speaker arrangement. I changed the speaker arrangement to "Pass Through". In MPlayer I left the alsa device as "defualt", and changed the codec to "AC3/DTS pass-through S/PDIF". The results were no audio at all with smooth video.

Then I checked the alamixer and found the IEC958 switch on. I muted it (i.e., alsamixer displayed "Item: IEC958 [Off]" in the upper portion). I tried Xine again, and I got one small blip out of the speakers (the sound is not intelligible). However, when I went back to alsamixer, the IEC958 was back on! Everytime I try to play a DVD it gets forced back on?!? Not sure what is going on there.

It looks like everything is setup properly, but it just won't pass-through for some reason. I still don't have an optical cable, but I am going to get one tomorrow and see if that does anything. Thanks for the help, any other thoughts as to what is going on. It sure seems like everything should work.

Chris

Chris

this is exactly the same behaviour than on my system. Everytime you start playing something the switch is set to on. Just try to keep xine or mplayer running and switch IEC958 to off (while playing). This should do.

I like mplayer bacause of its relatively meaningful debug output.
I mplayer does not report any error and play video well than the IEC958 switch should be the only problem.

As I mentioned above, there should be a fix using the hooks plugin, but Ineed some help or a lot of time to figure out how to use it. So for now I am used to the habit to switch it off manually.

If you still have no sound dump me an output from mplayer to debug.

Ulf

TZ

Your problem seems much different since your Board is different. I have no clue from your output what could be wrong, but it looks like your soundcard has no digital out, or more likely the kernel module for that is not setup/loaded.

Regarding your file format, just try a different wav file or record one with arecord first.

Ulf

Ulf,

I have already tried turning IEC958 off while the video was playing, but it did not help. Also, I was reading the MPlayer documentation online and I changed your command line a bit. I used "-afm hwac3" since it works with both DTS and AC3 file formats (the movies I am trying to play have both types of sound tracks). I also added "-channels 6" after "dvd://1" to force 5.1 sound. Here is a sample output when I tried to play "Pirates of the Caribbean" DVD (the results were identical for the "Braveheart" DVD):

cjspinelli@ASUS-A7N8X-Deluxe:~> mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=0.2 -afm hwac3 dvd://1 -channels 6 -dvd-device /dev/dvd
MPlayer dev-SVN-rUNKNOWN-4.1.0 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3200+ (Family: 6, Model: 10, Stepping: 0)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 1 SSE2: 0
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.


Failed to open /dev/rtc: Permission denied (it should be readable by the user.)
Opening joystick device /dev/input/js0
Can't open joystick device /dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
Can't init input joystick
Setting up LIRC support...
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: Connection refused
Failed to open LIRC support.
You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing dvd://1.
Reading disc structure, please wait...
There are 54 titles on this DVD.
There are 17 chapters in this DVD title.
There are 1 angles in this DVD title.
DVD successfully opened.
MPEG-PS file format detected.
VIDEO: MPEG2 720x480 (aspect 3) 29.970 fps 9800.0 kbps (1225.0 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [mpegpes] MPEG 1/2 Video passthrough
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Mpeg PES)
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
Try adding the scale filter, e.g. -vf spp,scale instead of -vf spp.
VDecoder init failed
Opening video decoder: [libmpeg2] MPEG 1/2 Video decoder libmpeg2-v0.4.0b
Selected video codec: [mpeg12] vfm: libmpeg2 (MPEG-1 or 2 (libmpeg2))
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Trying to force audio codec driver family hwac3...
Opening audio decoder: [hwac3] AC3/DTS pass-through S/PDIF
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
hwac3: switched to DTS, 768000 bps, 48000 Hz
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, ac3, 768.0 kbit/50.00% (ratio: 96000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [hwdts] afm: hwac3 (DTS through S/PDIF)
==========================================================================
alsa-init: using device hw:0,2
alsa: 48000 Hz/2 channels/4 bpf/65536 bytes buffer/Signed 16 bit Little Endian
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch ac3 (1 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 720x480 => 854x480 Planar YV12
A: 0.6 V: 0.6 A-V: 0.002 ct: 0.017 12/ 10 ??% ??% ??,?% 0 0
demux_mpg: 24000/1001fps progressive NTSC content detected, switching framerate.


The video worked great, but still no audio. It appears as if MPlayer is sending the audio signal, but the signal is not being received by the Cambridge SoundWorks DTT3500 decoder?!? Also, it appears that the alsa driver is using 4 channels, or maybe only 2 channels. What do all of the items on the "alsa:" and "AO:" line mean? Thanks again for the help, I am one step closer. Now I just have to figure out where the audio signal is going. Any thoughts?

Chris

PS - I looked at the back of my motherboard and in the manual, and there is not an optical output anywhere. I am not sure what the additional subdevice is in the "aplay -l" output, since there is no optical output (i.e., the motherboard only has only one S/PDIF out, the coaxial).

Ulf,

First, thanks for your help! It turns out that the digital signal was there all along. I needed to select a button on my Cambridge SoundWorks DTT3500 Digital decoder (under "Dolby Pro Logic" -> "Digtial In"). It is a funny story actually, I pressed the "Digital In" button on the off chance it might work, and then the basic SUSE operating sounds starting coming out of all of the speakers! I had never heard that before, so I decide to try the movies, but still no sound. So, I switched from "Pass Through" to "5.1" in the "Speaker Arrangement" in Xine and it worked great. Then I went back into MPlayer and used the "AC3 decoding with liba52" option instead of "AC3/DTS pass-through S/PDIF", and MPlayer worked great as well.

Then I started alsamixer, and checked the IEC958 option. It is still ON when the audio works in both Xine and MPlayer. It appears the coded AC3/DTS signal is either not being transmitted properly, or being blocked by the IEC958. However, the software decoding is working perfect so I am not concerned.

This is the first time I have gotten digital sound out of my nForce 2/SoundStorm chipset without the nVIDIA drivers. Thanks again for all your help! I am going to reference another guy I was working with to this thread. Cheers, and maybe I will post with you again sometime!

Chris

Ulf:

In my case I still have no sound. The HWINFO is below. I had tried playing with amarok or the test sound in control center, but no feedback except the cpu applet showing "action". I tried your suggestion of aplay:

I don't have the files asound.conf or modules.conf. While in the alsamixer, I had tried the above with the IEC958 toggleing from red to white (when no L R are shown).

This is the output of my hardware sound:

The Driver info#0 was changed following the Driver Activation Cmd, but no change either.

¿What do you suggest?

Thanks

This is the latest report, after updating the ALSA drivers to 1.0.13

Everything seems to work. mpg123 counts frames and hwinfo --sound resports IRQ 185 events count up, but...still no sound (speakers on, volume up, mixer to full, IEC958 off. This is the listing of hwinfo --sound with mpg123 playing, but if done with amarok, the mp3 song finishes immediately, there is no frame count or graphic equalizer movement as in the frame count in mpg123. Alsaconf was run after booting, but the "Little Endian" test.wav did not produce a sound, but it took its seconds to play and IRQ events counted up. I've tried the same above with modprobing as instructed by "Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe snd-via82xx" below, without success.

Any idea of what I should watch next?

You seem to have the same basic setup as me, but this doesn't work for me. Here's what's funny...the following /etc/asound.conf works for me, except that it obviously doesn't use dmix, so only one program can use my analog and digital outputs at once (one program for each, that is):

pcm.!default { type plug slave {pcm "iec958" rate 48000}}

So all I want is to to have the same functionality now, where the SPDIF is the default for most things, but I can tell certain programs to use my analog (mainly VoIP apps, cause my headset is plugged into the analog) -- and I want more than one program to be able to make sound at once, so that while I'm listening to music, for instance, Gaim can still make the sound that tells me I have a new message.

Here's aplay -l

card 0: ICH5 [Intel ICH5], device 0: Intel ICH [Intel ICH5]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: ICH5 [Intel ICH5], device 4: Intel ICH - IEC958 [Intel ICH5 - IEC958]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: M44 [M Audio Delta 44], device 0: ICE1712 multi [ICE1712 multi]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Just ignore the M44, because it never gives me any problems -- I use it specifically with envy24control and jack, for home studio stuff.

Thanks!
Clay