[thomas9992]

Sorry I am a bit of a newbie, but I am trying to get ac3 passthrough to work on this motherboard running ubuntu 8.0.4.

I have the add on spdif module, but I cant get it to pass sound either through xbmc or directly using aplay.

I know many of you are using this board, and was hoping for a point in the right direction, as I have been reading for hours tonight.

I do not even see the spdif device when i run aplay -L only the analog devices are shown.

Any ideas??

Thanks

[jimb0b]

have you tried downloading and updating alsa ?

[thomas9992]

ALSA was installed with the ubuntu distribution I am using it for the analog sound. I have not had much succcess with updating it.

[elupus]

there is no support for output of audio over HDMI port in neither video drivers or alsa.

[thomas9992]

Sorry I wasn't clear. I am aware of the lack of HDMI support. For this reason I got the spdif adapter for the board. I am connecting to my reciever via an optical cable. The issue is not with xbmc. It is an issue with alsa, as if I run aplay -l or aplay -L i do not see an iec958 device, all i see are analog devices.

I think the solution to this problem involves a hammer and a high roof to throw the small parts from at this point.

[althekiller]

You'd probably be better off getting this working in general in the Ubuntu forums (their user base is considerably higher), then coming back here IF it doesn't work in XBMC afterwards.

[tomsun]

Here is a solution that worked for me .. If I understand your problem.

Under settings and audio

you will see to settings for audio.

one says: IEC958
other says: default

put IEC958 in both places. this will send sound via spdf

/t

[talon95]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but you did un-mute the SPDIF in alsamixer
didn't you?

I only ask because it's a mistake I've made in the past.

aplay -L lists only Analog on my system as well but the SPDIF works.

aplay -l lists Device 1 as Digital.

Peter

[BLKMGK]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but you did un-mute the SPDIF in alsamixer
didn't you?

I only ask because it's a mistake I've made in the past.

aplay -L lists only Analog on my system as well but the SPDIF works.

aplay -l lists Device 1 as Digital.

Peter

that mistake bit me too on my first build so it's not a stupid question at all! Has happened to a few folks:p

[rodercot]

Not sure what codec your board has on it but if it is like the new Asus M3N boards do yourself a favor and disable the on-board sound card and get one that works with alsa out of the box. I have been playing with this M3N78-VM board for two weeks in Hardy and I have done everything I can think of to get the on-board sound working (passing spdif). Azalia - snd-hda-intel - NVidia HDA - do a search on any of these and you will see the problems people are having.

I could not get my Spdif IEC958 to show up anywhere, I ended up modifying the hda_codec.c file and at least that got me the iec958 switches in alsamixer but even with those unmuted on I could not get pass-through - Analog is fine though.

This I believe stems from the alc880(3)(9) analog chipset (external codec) and then the VIA/Internal chipset codec (digital) for the spdif optical on-board then the ext-spdif pin-outs and then the hdmi audio output as well. there are two drivers for M$ Windows for this board one for the analog alc codec and then one for the hdmi audio (digital audio) output portion.

- I have read that some new Radeon cards have hdmi audio and video working in small capacity, they somehow trick the system into thinking that the audio portion is in fact an spdif connector.

rgds,

Dave