ALSA Digital output on VIA 8235 [not needed anymore]

[eelke]

I'm trying to get sound from my onboard VIA 8235. Its connected to my amp using coax. SPDIF passthrough from Xine for Dolby Digital and DTS works so I do have a connection. But normal stereo output doesn't work.

In KMix I have turned up the volumes of the outputs and I tried most of the switches but nothing helps.

[harijay]

Hi I have a related question on this bb. I still dont have it truly working with the same card and alsa
But strangely I use LimeWire ( the pp client) which uses xmms and mplayer as its backend. Once I start and play an audio file in limewire , then the optical out works with al applications including xmms etc where it was not working before. So Limewire someway knows how to wake up the alsa driver.
I know this makes no sense but it works for me..
Oh yeah and normal stereo output is not dts right..so have you told your receiver your input signal is not dts/5.1. I have to have pro-logic selected on my receiver to have it process stereo sounds coming in thru the coax
Hari

[eelke]

I'll try limewire, my DTS receiver has an autodetect on the digital in and switches between pro-logic, dolby digital and dts automatically so that won't be a problem.

EDIT
Tried limewire but it doesn't make any difference, still doesn't work.

[eelke]

I decided not to use the spdif as it causes ticks in the signal with Windows.

[harijay]

Well , After weeks of having flaky and bizarre output to the digital out or SPDIF ( optical out) on my Gigabyte 7VAXP , with a via8233
Wherein lspci gives

bash-2.05b# lspci | grep "audio"
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50)

I finally have a working optical out with xmms and all my normal mp3 music.

here is what I did
My kernel is 2.6.9 (basically a 2.6 kernel)

Linux haripc 2.6.9-gentoo-r9 #3 Sun Dec 5 23:46:38 EST 2004 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2400+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

I updated my kernel from 2.6.1 to 2.6.9
I compiled ALSA into my kernel ( not as a module) and made sure that all the alsa-OSS and PCM options ( i.e alsa OSS emulation) were done as modules.
I did not enable full OSS support ( since it said it was deprecated) and compiled the PCI via 82xx driver directly into my kernel.

SO in detail
#
# Sound
#
CONFIG_SOUND=y

#
# Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
#
CONFIG_SND=y
CONFIG_SND_TIMER=y
CONFIG_SND_PCM=y
CONFIG_SND_RAWMIDI=y
CONFIG_SND_SEQUENCER=m
CONFIG_SND_SEQ_DUMMY=m
CONFIG_SND_OSSEMUL=y
CONFIG_SND_MIXER_OSS=m
CONFIG_SND_PCM_OSS=m
CONFIG_SND_SEQUENCER_OSS=y
CONFIG_SND_RTCTIMER=m

#
# PCI devices
#
CONFIG_SND_VIA82XX=y

#
# Open Sound System
#
# CONFIG_SOUND_PRIME is not set


THEN I am loading the pcm and my lsmod looks like this

snd_pcm_oss 52968 0
snd_mixer_oss 19776 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_oss 33920 0
snd_seq_midi_event 7360 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 51856 4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 8072 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq

AND in my /etc/modules.d/alsa
I have# ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore
# OSS/Free portion - card #1
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
## OSS/Free portion - card #2
## alias sound-service-1-0 snd-mixer-oss
## alias sound-service-1-3 snd-pcm-oss
## alias sound-service-1-12 snd-pcm-oss

alias /dev/mixer snd-mixer-oss
alias /dev/dsp snd-pcm-oss
alias /dev/midi snd-seq-oss

# Set this to the correct number of cards.
options snd cards_limit=1


And then when I start xmms and hit play . I get sound out of my digital out and my receiver which is set to optical in and PORLOGIC mode.
Howvere I have found that after all this sound sometimes mysteriously stops. I dont know why
ANy tips on improving my setup is very wellcome
Hari