Need help getting pulseaudio on optical output.

anon311 · 12-01-2008, 07:55 PM

Question: how can I make Pulseaudio use the optical output on my motherboard?

I tried lots of stuff, got pavucontrol (the pulseaudio mixer) to list all the 5.1 channels and even digital output, but it just doesn't seem to be sending anything out on the digital / optical / s/pdif output.

In the pavucontrol I made sure that the audio stream (Amarok) got assigned to the digital output, or even the combined output, but that wasn't the problem obviously.

"alsamixer -c 0" shows me the 5.1 channels and an iec958 channel, which I have unmuted.

Other info:

Code:

$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: AD198x Digital [AD198x Digital]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

$ cat .asoundrc
pcm.!default {
  # type pulse
  type plug
  slave {
    pcm "spdif"
  }
}

ctl.!default {
  type pulse
}

pcm.!spdif {
  type hw
  card 0
  device 1
}

pcm.pulse {
  type pulse
}

ctl.pulse {
  type pulse
}

pcm.equalized {
  type plug
  slave.pcm "equalizer";
}

pcm.equalizer {
  type ladspa

  # The output from the EQ can either go direct to a hardware device
  # (if you have a hardware mixer, e.g. SBLive/Audigy) or it can go
  # to the software mixer shown here.
  slave.pcm "plughw"
  #slave.pcm "plug:dmix"

  # Sometimes you may need to specify the path to the plugins,
  # especially if you've just installed them.  Once you've logged
  # out/restarted this shouldn't be necessary, but if you get errors
  # about being unable to find plugins, try uncommenting this.
  path "/usr/lib/ladspa"

  plugins [
    {
      label mbeq
      id 1197
      input {
       #this setting is here by example, edit to your own taste
       #bands: 50hz, 100hz, 156hz, 220hz, 311hz, 440hz, 622hz, 880hz, 
       #       1250hz, 1750hz, 25000hz, 50000hz, 10000hz, 20000hz
       #range: -70 to 30
        controls [ -1 -1 -1 -1 -5 -10 -20 -17 -12 -7 -6 -5 -5 0 0 ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

$ tail -n 2 /etc/pulse/default.pa 
# Added on 02-12-2008 in an attempt to get digital output working
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,1

And it's kernel 2.6.27.2 on Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10).

I'd really like to keep using Pulseaudio though. In a perfect situation, I'd like to be able to select the channels (digital/analog/both, and the separate channels) an audio stream gets sent to, but that's something for later perhaps, right now I just like to use my new home theater set with the optical connection.

If I screwed the configuration up somewhere, please let me know so I can learn from it.

If you need more info, I'd be happy to give it..)