Some problems with coaxial spdif with alsa

Jykke · Apprentice Joined: 31 Mar 2006 Posts: 246

I just connected my rig to the amplifier with coaxial SPDIF.
I am using ASUS A7N8X-XE mobo (nforce2 and stuff).
I have tried .asoundrc from:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Configuring_Digital_Sound

which seemed like a good idea until now

I get sound with:

mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=0,2 some.mp3

I don't get sound with alsa:device=spdif and not with "digital" or "mixed-digital" from
that .asoundrc example. This is a mystery to me - I assumed that "digital" would more
or less equate hw:0,2

I haven't been able to get xmms to work with this yet and most important
mythtv - so it is a bit of a problem for me.

Crisis · l33t Joined: 10 Feb 2003 Posts: 613 Location: Portland, OR

Have you tried alsamixer? That shoudl show you all channels on the device, and you can play with un-muting various channels.

I know my SPDIF was called something like External I believe.

Jykke · Apprentice Joined: 31 Mar 2006 Posts: 246

Yeah well like I said I get the sound out with that command - I get it out even from SPDIF but
I am just wondering why it isn't doing rest of the stuff and why I don't seem to be able to get
it to work in mythtv as I expect

Crisis · l33t Joined: 10 Feb 2003 Posts: 613 Location: Portland, OR

Oh, so your spdif is working fine, you just aren't able to get it to work in your programs?

Do you have them set to use alsa? In XMMS tty emering xmms-alsa if you have anot already, and make sure the output is set to Alsa.

MythTV I am not that familar with but I'm sure you have to set it to use alsa somewhere

trouser_pilot · n00b Joined: 07 Sep 2002 Posts: 52 Location: Calgary, AB

I've been able to get the SPDIF out with Myth using the the A7N7X-E Deluxe. In myth, the device name has to be set to ALSA:plug:spdif. I found that on a myth list. The only problem I've had is if I enable AC3 and I want to watch an analog show, I get the chipmunk effect. I just turn off AC3 in those cases. I too had started with the wiki howto but failed miserable. I removed my .asoundrc and tried with the suggestion and it worked (at this point, I was certain that the IEC958 device was unmuted in alsamixer)