I seem to only be able to do consumer electronics

[Laura Conrad]

A couple of orders from monoprice.com later, I have my home theater
set up so that the cable box, the broadcast TV, and the DVD player are
all playing digital surround sound.

I have failed miserably at getting my computer to put anything out
through the digital output, either with Windows or Linux.  I have
found several pages that describe someone's struggle that ended up
working, but doing the same things they do doesn't do it for me.

I don't actually care if my mythtv recordings play in stereo or
surround, but *somebody* must know how to make a current linux
distribution use SPDIF.

The actual computer that I care about is a 9.10 mythbuntu
installation, but the cable is currently on my desktop with 9.4
ubuntu.  In both cases it's the onboard sound card; a Realtek in the
case of the downstairs computer and an Nvidia upstairs.

--
Laura   (mailto:lconrad@...)
[phone] 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139  
http://www.laymusic.org/ http://www.serpentpublications.org

Part of the joy of falling in love -- for the intelligent, the
watchers, the judicious -- is the delicious license to set something
above thinking clearly, the pleasure of being driven, taken over,
overwhelmed.

A. S. Byatt _Still Life_
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[scott obrien]

Laura,

Have you tried to play with the basic ALSA settings? I have found that
turning on the various channels one by one will let you figure out what you
need to enable for your SPDIF to work. Use the M key on each channel to
determine which are muted by default. I have done this for both onboard and
PCI audio setups and been successful with both.

Here is the link that will show you how alsamixer and alsactl work:
http://linux.dsplabs.com.au/alsamixer-and-alsactl-store-adjust-and-save-alsa-mixer-settings-p29/

Let me know if this doesn't work.



On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 7:33 PM, Laura Conrad <lconrad@...> wrote:

>
> A couple of orders from monoprice.com later, I have my home theater
> set up so that the cable box, the broadcast TV, and the DVD player are
> all playing digital surround sound.
>
> I have failed miserably at getting my computer to put anything out
> through the digital output, either with Windows or Linux.  I have
> found several pages that describe someone's struggle that ended up
> working, but doing the same things they do doesn't do it for me.
>
> I don't actually care if my mythtv recordings play in stereo or
> surround, but *somebody* must know how to make a current linux
> distribution use SPDIF.
>
> The actual computer that I care about is a 9.10 mythbuntu
> installation, but the cable is currently on my desktop with 9.4
> ubuntu.  In both cases it's the onboard sound card; a Realtek in the
> case of the downstairs computer and an Nvidia upstairs.
>
> --
> Laura   (mailto:lconrad@...)
> [phone]  233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139
> http://www.laymusic.org/ http://www.serpentpublications.org
>
> Part of the joy of falling in love -- for the intelligent, the
> watchers, the judicious -- is the delicious license to set something
> above thinking clearly, the pleasure of being driven, taken over,
> overwhelmed.
>
> A. S. Byatt _Still Life_
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss@...
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>

--
"preparation is, if not the key to genius, then at least the key to sounding
like a genius" - Churchill
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[Laura Conrad]

>>>>> "scott" == scott j o'brien <scottrules@...> writes:

    scott> Have you tried to play with the basic ALSA settings? I have
    scott> found that turning on the various channels one by one will
    scott> let you figure out what you need to enable for your SPDIF
    scott> to work. Use the M key on each channel to determine which
    scott> are muted by default. I have done this for both onboard and
    scott> PCI audio setups and been successful with both.

So you don't fool with pulseaudio at all?  Or have you removed or
killed it before you start fiddling with alsamixer?

    scott> Here is the link that will show you how alsamixer and alsactl work:
    scott> http://linux.dsplabs.com.au/alsamixer-and-alsactl-store-adjust-and-save-alsa-mixer-settings-p29/

It looks like I should be able to send sound to the alsa stuff by
using the device name hw:0,1, because "aplay -l" says:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC888 Analog [ALC888 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: ALC888 Digital [ALC888 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

But when I say "aplay -D hw:0,1 <filename>.wav", it doesn't give me
any error messages, and seems to think it's playing something, but I
don't hear any sound.

When I run gnome-alsamixer while I'm "playing" the file and click and
unclick boxes, it doesn't make any difference.

Of course, it could be that the digital input, which I've never used,
on this set of speakers is broken, or even that I have the cable
plugged into the wrong place on the sound card.  I'm using the orange
jack that's next to the green jack that I get analog sound out of.
There's another orange jack underneath, but I think that's for rear
speakers or something.

--
Laura   (mailto:lconrad@...)
[phone] 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139  
http://www.laymusic.org/ http://www.serpentpublications.org

There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.

Brendan Behan (1923 - 1964)

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