SPDIF in 12.04 please help! [solved]

[rebelkiller]

I am trying to connect my sound card to my denon a/v receiver via SPDIF (coax).

I have an Asus G31-Intel board with an onboard connector which is connected to the correspondent ASUS-SPDIF bracket. The SPDIF bracket is connected via coax (cinch) to my denon receiver.

Sound card is a ALC662 and is recognized correctly. Analog and digital devices are shown when typing aplay -l and aplay -L.

I already tried every setting in webadmin for MD (analog, SPDIF coax, SPDIF optical, HDMI, Manual). None of them is working.

Analog sound does work, but no digital sound. Doing a speaker-test results in playing (as shown in terminal) but no sound output out of my speakers. And: yes it its unmuted via alsamixer.

But: in alsamixer i can mute/unmute SPDIF but i cannot move the SPDIF sliders.

The SPDIF bracket has an optical and a coax output. Unfortunately i have not got an optical cable atm.


Any hints?

bernd

(again something which should work ootb and does not....)

[Marie.O]

[..]But: in alsamixer i can mute/unmute SPDIF but i cannot move the SPDIF sliders.

Not being able to move the slider is correct. The computer can't change the volume of the digital outputs easily.

(again something which should work ootb and does not....)

That comment was not really helpful to get you further, was it?! I understand that people are not happy, when stuff doesn't work for them, which should. But still, that comment doesn't help.

Did you check the wiki, as to what other things may help you? Are you able to output to S/P-DIF from running VLC or other audio output software?

[theteju]

@rebelkiller

Just out of curiosity , I want to ask, Does your Core has sound card?

I had and odd experience with 10.04 where, my core did not have soundcard hence some ALSA packages were not installed on core leading to issues with sound on my MD !!

[rebelkiller]

@theteju:
yes it has and it is working (analog).

...Did you check the wiki, as to what other things may help you? Are you able to output to S/P-DIF from running VLC or other audio output software?

yes, I did read the wiki. I already tried solving this by myself and I read many pages in the web. Nothing worked (editing asound.conf, editing webadmin, editing alsa-base.conf etc.)

I was not able to get speaker-test and aplay commands to bring out anything.
 

[Marie.O]

If speaker-test isn't working, chances are high, that the reason for it not working might be outside of LinuxMCE's realm. FYI: I had S/P-DIF sound going a gazillion light years ago when I wasn't doing HDMI. And as soon as things were configured correct that speaker-test worked, LinuxMCE worked as well.

Make sure the cable is good, make sure the amp is setup correct (44/48kHz issues?). Check with a Ubuntu 1204 live DVD if that allows you to playback sound.

[thor]

Not sure if this will help, but I had a similar problem with a CM8738 sound card with both coaxial and tos-link out. I already had a coax cable present so used that. The 1204 scripts that set up the sound card for this particular MD upon every reboot kept placing "plughw:0,1" in /etc/asound.conf. What I needed was asound.conf to read: "plughw:0,2". I didn't figure that out until trying

Code: [Select]

speaker-test -D plughw:0,2. Using aplay -L helped me identify that right device number.

To keep the correct "0,2" in place after a reboot, I had to edit /usr/pluto/template/asound.conf.

[rebelkiller]

I finally did not get it to work with my old graphics card. I decided not to invest any additional time in that problem.

I swapped my graphics card (nvidia 8400GS) into Nvidia GT210 in order to use Audio over HDMI without additional cables and disabled onboard sound. It worked OOTB.

It might have been an defective SPDIF- interface card or something else....

B.