Audio over HDMI - NVidia

(2012-04-02 20:03)skweezer Wrote:  THANKS
Your instructions, plus a combination of these.
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW...controller
Got it to work on my revo 3700.

Thanks a ton

No worries! I hope people find that of help. I will try to get some additional information on the wiki like was suggested to me as well. However, XBMC is a hobby and work sometimes infringes on available play time.

Glad to hear my post helped!!

(2012-04-02 17:15)FuryStryker Wrote:  So I tried all of your steps above and at this step:

"Press F6: and you will be prompted with a selection window. In my example i have device 0 "HDA Intel" and device 1 "HDA NVidia". Select the second option and you will now see that you probably only have one option. This option is probably the 'S/PDIF' and it most likely will have a 'MM'. I just installed Eden 11 yesterday on a fresh install and mine was muted out of the box. Good chance yours is as well.
"
I can't unmute the 0,3 HDMI S/PDIF portion for some reason?

My aplay -l:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC662 rev1 Analog [ALC662 rev1 Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC662 rev1 Digital [ALC662 rev1 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

So my XBMCbuntu is configured to use CUSTOM for both output/passthrough and with PLUGHW:1,3.

My setup is Acer Revo 3700->HDMI -> TV -> receiver

Good Morning,

In your above quote, I bolded two statements. You are trying to unmute 0,3 but your HDMI sound is clearly stated as 1,3 in your aplay.
If you forget about the receiver for now, can you get HDMI sound working directly to the TV Speakers by using Custom PLUGHW:1,3?

Just want to say a big thanks to Rubbernuts for the very helpful post, it got me up and working in no time.

Only one thing that was slightly different for me that others may find useful was instead of using 'PLUGHW:1,3' which wouldn't work for me I had to use all lower-case 'plughw:1,3' instead.

(2012-04-06 22:36)fr1day Wrote:  Just want to say a big thanks to Rubbernuts for the very helpful post, it got me up and working in no time.

Only one thing that was slightly different for me that others may find useful was instead of using 'PLUGHW:1,3' which wouldn't work for me I had to use all lower-case 'plughw:1,3' instead.

Yup.. Linux is very Case Sensitive. Glad you got it running! Personally I'm loving this Release!!

John

I had no sound as well and have followed along here but now am seeing a little box pop up when starting a movie that states:

Failed to initialize audio device.
Check your audiosettings.

I still don't have any sound on my Acer Aspire. Has anybody seen this popup and can offer any advice?

Thanks.

Okay, I went to bed and tried again after a few hours of sleep <grin>.

Similar to a poster above, once I changed "PLUGHW" to lowercase "plughw", the error message went away and I started to get some nasty screeching through the TV speakers. At least we're moving in the right direction. I then switched "Audio output" in xbmc's "Audio - settings" from "HDMI" to "Analog" and lo and behold, I could hear the movie's soundtrack! I don't understand since the only cable I'm using is the HDMI cable. Why wouldn't "HDMI" work? And what is the difference between the two settings, HDMI vs. Analog?

At least I have sound though, yeah!

Thanks to Rubbernuts and others for posting their helpful advice.

The HDMI setting implies digital audio. If your TV/receiver doesn't support the digital audio codec being used, then you'll either get screeching or no sound at all. Many TVs don't support anything other than analog since they would just be downmixing it to stereo.

Great post. I had similar problems and loved how clear this was and yes, this should be on the wiki. I never could figure out "aplay -l" (lower case L - Duh) So I just used alsamixer to see what my sound card used.

barronius-
I had the same thing happen (having to switch it it analog) in Eden but in the beta versions I kept it on HDMI I still don't know why it work in earlier version.

digitalb0y -
+1 :-)

Your explanation makes sense, Plaguester. But in my case, it is going from the xbmc computer to a Denon receiver (via HDMI) which supports the various audio codecs and then from there to the TV.

Quote:Your explanation makes sense, Plaguester. But in my case, it is going from the xbmc computer to a Denon receiver (via HDMI) which supports the various audio codecs and then from there to the TV.

Good. Run through these (some of them you've probably already done, but I prefer to give the list in a complete fashion for future googlers):

1. Temporarily remove any changes that you made to /etc/asound.conf or ~/.asoundrc by renaming the file to something else.
2. If "aplay -l" indicates that your NVidia HDMI device is on card 1, rather than card 0, disable the onboard sound in the BIOS.
3. Unmute all "S/PDIF", PCM, "IEC958", or digital entries in alsamixer ("MM" is muted, "00" is on; 'm' toggles it).
4. If you disabled the onboard sound in step 2, run "aplay -l" again and see if it looks different than before.
5. Run "aplay -L" (yes, upper case L) and see if you have a clear listing for an HDMI out ("hdmi:blahblah"). Run "speaker-test -D plug:hdmi" (Ctrl-C quits). If you hear sound, skip the next step.
6. Run "speaker-test -D plughw:0,X" where X is the device number until you hear noise (Ctrl-C quits). Note the device number that worked.
7. In XBMC > Settings > System > Audio Output, set "Audio Output Type" to "HDMI"; "Speaker Configuration" to your setup; "DTS Capable Receiver" to "On" if and only if your receiver can handle it; Ditto for Dolby Digital.
8. For "Audio Output Device" and "Passthrough Audio Device", start with the simplest device (probably something like "HDMI (ALSA)"). Play a file with DTS or AC3 audio. If that doesn't work, try the one that looks like "NVidia - HDMI - X" (where X is your device number). If that doesn't work, try "custom" and type in "plughw:0,X". Some hardware could also be reported as "IEC958". My receiver reports the switch to "Dolby Digital" as soon as the file begins playing.