HDMI AUDIO a Success finally

BLKMGK Wrote:I don't suppose there's a chance anyone has plans to update the XBMC Live image to add the latest ALSA and NVIDIA drivers? Pretty please?

Is your sticking point on this using HDMI audio instead of spdif? This board is working great for me with the current Live with a few tweaks, albeit I am using spdif.

Also, I noticed there is a setting in the bios to select hdmi audio or spdif audio. Have you fooled around with that yet?

Geekzilla Wrote:Is your sticking point on this using HDMI audio instead of spdif? This board is working great for me with the current Live with a few tweaks, albeit I am using spdif.

BLKMGK,

If you are using Live then I think the Kernel maybe your restriction with HDMI audio, reading through all the posts on the A/V forums they all talk about 2.6.27+ Kernel and we are using 2.6.24, which could pose a problem. BUT if Geekzilla has Spdif working that means that his aplay -l must be showing a digital device as well as an Analog, now if it is seeing the correct device is the next question.

Geekzilla can you post the output of your aplay -l please.

I am still not sure where they are putting that patch in to compile with. You cannot just drop the file into the alsa-driver directory so it would need to be saved as a patch.?

rgds,

Dave

I am currently using an install of Ubuntu 8.1, I am attempting to get HDMI audio. This is being built as an "appliance" for a friend and to test how well a Celeron CPU can handle high bitrate 1080 content. If I could do this with a LiveCD I'd be thrilled but I am just as happy installing it.

aplay -l outputs this for me:

Kernel info:
2.6.27-9-generic #1 SMP

NVIDIA driver is 177.80 per the NVIDIA applet.

Playback in the audio properties applet is set to Generic 10de NVIDIA MCP7a HDMI (OSS Mixer). Digital-1 and PCM-2 are unmuted, volume is up. Video playback is awful with dropped frames, likely due to bad video synch.

Ideas?

BLKMGK Wrote:I am currently using an install of Ubuntu 8.1, I am attempting to get HDMI audio. This is being built as an "appliance" for a friend and to test how well a Celeron CPU can handle high bitrate 1080 content. If I could do this with a LiveCD I'd be thrilled but I am just as happy installing it.

aplay -l outputs this for me:

Code:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC1200 Analog [ALC1200 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: ALC1200 Digital [ALC1200 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Kernel info:
2.6.27-9-generic #1 SMP

NVIDIA driver is 177.80 per the NVIDIA applet.

Playback in the audio properties applet is set to Generic 10de NVIDIA MCP7a HDMI (OSS Mixer). Digital-1 and PCM-2 are unmuted, volume is up. Video playback is awful with dropped frames, likely due to bad video synch.

Ideas?

Well loooking at that output, I think if you were to upgrade your Video driver to 177.82 Minimal and switch the Bios to HDMI Output from Spdif, you just may get lucky, remember to change the defaults in XBMC to read hdmi and hdmi. Playing with the mixer changed nothing in my case other than master volume, I am not sure why your OSS Mixer is getting the HDMI if you change to alsa mixer what card does it show.

Dave

rodercot Wrote:Geekzilla can you post the output of your aplay -l please.

I modified my audio drivers here.

aplay -l

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC888 Analog [ALC888 Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: ALC888 Digital [ALC888 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Ok Guys,

I went out and picked up a P5N7A-VM and ran the same setup I ran on my M3N78-VM with XBMCLive 8.10 and the HDMI output is working.

I have tested 5.1 dd and dts streaming from Network and DVD playback.
2 ch pcm,
Stereo
Mono

I have not tested flac or mp3 music playback yet but I am sure it will be fine.

I need to change one step in my process which I will do right now.

So my method should work for all NVIDIA chipset boards.

One thing I found funny is that I could not get sound from the on-board Spdif connector, I had to use my Spdif connector plugged into the Spdif out on the board (the three pin connector)

This took me less than an hour this time.

good luck with it AND THIS DOES WORK WITH XBMCLive and the current 2.6.24 kernel, I installed the Nvidia 180.11 driver, I did not try with the 177.82.

rgds,

Dave

MOST EXCELLENT!

Thanks very much, Dave, for validating that what i'm trying to set up will get there in the end. Now if I could just get the module options to stick around after a reboot, i'd be set and my DiNovo would keep working.

Can I add something of use that you didn't mention yet and might bite someone else as well: the BIOS default is for digital audio to be sent to the SPDIF port, not to HDMI. This must be changed in the BIOS. Otherwise, my setup uses an out-of-the-box P5N7A-VM.

Snowflake Wrote:MOST EXCELLENT!

Thanks very much, Dave, for validating that what i'm trying to set up will get there in the end. Now if I could just get the module options to stick around after a reboot, i'd be set and my DiNovo would keep working.

Can I add something of use that you didn't mention yet and might bite someone else as well: the BIOS default is for digital audio to be sent to the SPDIF port, not to HDMI. This must be changed in the BIOS. Otherwise, my setup uses an out-of-the-box P5N7A-VM.

No Problems, If I could just make a living testing hardware - LOL.

One thing to add, I watched the new Mummy DVD (crap by the way) Maybe it's because Fraser never ages, but heck even Indy got old and I like Maria Bello - but she does not work in that part. Anyhow back to this, watched the whole movie with no audio dropouts at all from the DVD playback.

But in further testing on some hd and BD rips I am getting major frame drops and some stutter as well as high 90-100% cpu usage on both cores during playback I am going to test both the 180.16 drivers and the 177.82 drivers and see what happens. I may try and up the gpu mem in the bios as well. I see that it is 256 in the bios stock and that should be more than enough. I cannot believe that NVIDIA has not figured a way to offload the cpu to the gpu yet. " I'm givin' er all she's got captain" dear old Scotty.

The 8200 chipset peformed better than this 9300 is, but the detail and color depth with this new board is amazingly rich in comparison, I did have to play with the contrast and brightness settings for the 9300 chipset.

Dave

My system now working but NOT for MP3. Thanks to Chaos for figuring it out -> http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=257...tcount=268

Note, you WILL need more memory than 256, bump it to 512. The VDAPU discussions I have been reading have highlighted this as an issue when doing GPU acceleration at least. VDAPU is the GPU acceleration speedups for H.264 in ffmpeg. That code hasn't migrated to XBMC, requires the 180.xx BETA drivers, and will be PROFILE specific. Me, I'm happy with CPU decoding until this is no longer specific to profile since NOTHING I have meets their profile specs <sigh> I would be careful running the 180.xx drivers guys, they are bigtime beta and still under heavy development.

I also found that a 3ghz Celeron won't cut it. I'm overclocking a E7300 to the exact same speed as the Celeron was and it's flawless! I will be trying it stock speed at other's request soonest.

I'd like to figure out why MP3 aren't playing back for me, help would be appreciated - Chaos has the same issue. I did have the SPIDF correctly set blah blah, his one line fix saved me.

P.S. Just ripped Mummy myself, stop spoiling it! I do think it sucks that the female co-star didn't come back - that will ruin it for sure