[KeithLM]

I'm just setting up this system with 11.10 and attempting to run XBMC on it. I can get video playback just fine, 1080p looks good, although there appears to be a problem with brightness, but I can get to that later. Right now I'm having lots of trouble with audio.

In the XBMC system settings it presents me with a just a few audio devices:
Defaults
Internal Audio Analog Stereo
GF108 High Definition Audio Controller Digital Stereo (HDMI) nr 4 <- I have no idea what that is

HDMI itself, or any kind of nVidia device is not listed. With Defaults or GF108 I get stereo only via HDMI and some movies, like those with DTS-HD, don't have any audio. I never see any errors in XBMC about failure to initialize audio device. I tried custom plughw:1,3 and plughw:1,7 but I got no audio at all with those.

Here's aplay -l

Code:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC889 Analog [ALC889 Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 3: ALC889 Digital [ALC889 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I did a default install of 11.10, it appears that I have alsa 1.0.24 and pulseaudio 1.0 installed. I have no /etc/asound.conf or .asound.conf files on my system.

Anyone know what steps I have to go through to get audio on this thing?

I got this out of dmesg:

Code:

# dmesg | grep NVidia
[   19.656178] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=9 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input8
[   19.656338] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=8 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input9
[   19.656456] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=7 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input10
[   19.656573] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=3 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input11

[el_Paraguayo]

I assume HDMI outputs are unmuted in alsamixer (as you seem to be getting some sound out)

I had issues with "plughw:x,y" and had to set up a .asoundrc file (there are a good few posted in these forums I think).

[KeithLM]

I assume HDMI outputs are unmuted in alsamixer (as you seem to be getting some sound out)

I had issues with "plughw:x,y" and had to set up a .asoundrc file (there are a good few posted in these forums I think).

I checked alsamixer and it seemed fine.

I thought at one time that pulseaudio and .asoundrc were dropped, or were no longer desired. I'm not sure on that though. Linux seems to be ever changing so it's hard to keep track of what the current methods for these things are, especially when there can be significant differences between Ubuntu releases.

[effbee]

Try Custom Output and Custom Passthrough as:
plughw:0,3
plughw:0,7
plughw:0,8
plughw:0,9

Try one of those at a time and see if you get proper sound.

[KeithLM]

Should I use plughw:0,X or plughw:1,X since my HDMI port is listed on card 1.

[KeithLM]

OK, I got it working with plughw:1,9. I used this thread to get some ideas. Now when I first started working with it this evening the display was off, and I got nothing with every combination of hw, plughw and 0,x or 1,x that I tried. Then I installed pavucontrol (but never ran it), and around the same time I also woke up the display. I thought I tried plughw:1,9 in XBMC yesterday and nothing worked.

So as it is now, I get DTS-ES from a DTS-HD track, DTS and DD work, and ogg vobis and AAC tracks are received by my receiver as MULTI IN (so I assume PCM).

Now if I could just get streaming DTS-HD to work... Also the brightness issue is still there. Blacks looked washed out.