HDMI AUDIO a Success finally

Well I upped the frame buffer to 512 and still have the same amount of frame drops.

I tested the Aviator HD rip and it is perfect. Casino Royal Bd rip is terrible, Transformers HD rip - is not watchable.

Turned the 8200 back on to test and they all play perfect except transformers still had problems. Probably my Megui settings for that one, I'll have to rerip it and try it again.

What settings are you running for your 7300 in the bios, I have mine all set to auto with the exception of the frame buffer. I am tempted to swap out my 8400 from this machine to the new board and try it.

Ironically, I am getting the best playback with the 177.82 driver.

as for your MP3's I had the same problem until I changed the second property in settings - system - audio from default to hdmi and iec958 to hdmi. They would not play otherwise no matter what setting in alsamixer I played with.

Dave

From memory on the E7300 - 10X 1200 for FSB, pretty sure that is correct but I can double check for you in a day or two. Booted at like 3.06ghz as I recall. My meGUI settings are pretty heavy and so far playback seems fine on my setup. I can share them if you would like in a few days.

What board are you using that you have added an 8400 to? This new build I have done has an onboard 9300 and is detailed here -> http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Public...er=9999386

My audio settings are hdmi hdmi, toggling DTS capable receiver seems to be the only thing that changes anything but still no MP3 audio <shrug> this build is for someone else to play movies on so I am not too worried but it is still annoying to not have MP3 audio <shrug>

P.s. Come to think of it I saw mention of new alsa tools for the new driver. Is everyone installing those too or are they coming along with the new driver? Makes me wonder if maybe that's why alsa doesn't seem effected by changes in the mixer - maybe we've not got the right utils?

BLKMGK Wrote:From memory on the E7300 - 10X 1200 for FSB, pretty sure that is correct but I can double check for you in a day or two. Booted at like 3.06ghz as I recall. My meGUI settings are pretty heavy and so far playback seems fine on my setup. I can share them if you would like in a few days.

What board are you using that you have added an 8400 to? This new build I have done has an onboard 9300 and is detailed here -> http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Public...er=9999386

My audio settings are hdmi hdmi, toggling DTS capable receiver seems to be the only thing that changes anything but still no MP3 audio <shrug> this build is for someone else to play movies on so I am not too worried but it is still annoying to not have MP3 audio <shrug>

P.s. Come to think of it I saw mention of new alsa tools for the new driver. Is everyone installing those too or are they coming along with the new driver? Makes me wonder if maybe that's why alsa doesn't seem effected by changes in the mixer - maybe we've not got the right utils?

The P5N7A has the 7300 in it and my desktop machine I am typing on has an 8400 in it. Write now I am in the middle of a AutoGK 6 season conversion of the xfiles or I would try it now.

I tried a 5% overclock with no luck at all - no boot, I tried 8x1200 - No boot. The is the newly small box 7300 in comparison to the original larger retail packaging. Do you recall if you upped your voltages at all.

Dave

Voltages were untouched on my build. Default FSB for the CPU was 800mhz as I recall, I bumped that to over 1K for sure. Mine is a retail CPU. Are yuo sure your heatsink is properly seated etc.? These CPU seem to overclock VERY easily and we're only talking about a few hundred mhz to get from 2.6 to 3ghz

BLKMGK Wrote:Voltages were untouched on my build. Default FSB for the CPU was 800mhz as I recall, I bumped that to over 1K for sure. Mine is a retail CPU. Are yuo sure your heatsink is properly seated etc.? These CPU seem to overclock VERY easily and we're only talking about a few hundred mhz to get from 2.6 to 3ghz

Yes I got it, I left the ratio at auto and set the overclock to Linked and the fsb to 1200 and the memory to 3:2 ratio I think which leaves it at 800 for the ram. I tested the same problem files and they were perfect other than Transformers which as I said I have always had problems with, so I need to rerip it anyhow.

That being said the price difference between the 7300 and the 6600Q or even 8200 is not enough of a concern that I would likely buy one of those instead. In my case I will swap the 8400 for the 7300 and all will be grand I would assume.

rgds,

Dave

Ah okay, I should have mentioned - I unlinked memory and FSB. I left the memory set to it's rated 800mhz and simply bumped FSB only. I have decent memory that would probably run past it's spec but I didn't want to throw potentially troubleshooting that into the mix as well! I wanted this dirt simple so that others could follow if they wished.

I have a Q6600 in one of my desktops. It BARELY makes 3ghz and is quite hot having required a voltage bump to do it, not a good choice IMO. More than 2 cores doesn't make sense for XBMC and it's a 65nm process chip to boot - not a good choice IMO. It is also $190 vs $120 for the CPU I'm running so the build price climbs.

Likewise with the 8200 you bump build price and I was trying to keep this low - I agree it's a good CPU for this if you do not mind spending the extra $40. However if you read threads here people are all trying to get AMD CPUs to work because the silly things cost a few bux less and failing to playback 1080 video. So I was trying to do this cheaply enough that they would have an alternative that actually worked!

The biggest difference between the 7200 and 8200 is additional cache and FSB. Since the 7200 can cut the mustard I don't care about the cache and am saving some money. $40 is about what that case cost me...

Looks like I spoke too soon. Since I don't have the network cable set up yet next to the TV I have been moving my XBMC over to my computer desk for setup, and then moving it back to the TV for test. I thought after the latest updates to the thread everything woudl be working, but it seems not. My Audio is still non-functional. To be fair, I had already installed the linuxant drivers from another test, so I didn't follow the steps above exactly... Maybe my ALSA installation is still wrong. I'll try starting from scratch tonight and follow the steps line by line to see if I get the same results.

I went poking in the BIOS again and read the message a little closer regarding the HDMI/SPDIF out setting. I'm wondering now whether that needs to be set to HDMI or not, it looks like this only needs to be changed if you're routing the SPDIF to a plug-in graphics card and not using the onboard one.

BLKMGK Wrote:My audio settings are hdmi hdmi

Can you tell me where you've set this? Is this on the Audio Settings page in XBMC? Right now (from memory) the first option on that page gives me (Analog|Digital) as options, and lower down there's two settings that you have to enter manually, one is "default" and the other is "iecNNNN" (or something like that). Are these last two where you set both to "hdmi"? If so, maybe that's where my system doesn't work.

Yes the two setting you are going to change to hdmi are the default and iec958 to read hdmi.

A quick test of this all is to run alsamixer after you run you script install and make sure that Alsa is seeing your Generic 10de MCP7A HDMI device, it is a good idea to go into alsa and make sure that all your iec958 devices are now unmuted and the like just to be safe. after the install on the P5N7A-VM I ended up with like three iec958 switches in playback and one in capture mode as well.

if you have a movie playing while you cange the settings to hdmi you need to stop the movie and restart it to pick-up the change in output settings.

This is install should overwrite your other Alsa install as stated in the link to the script page.

rgds,

Dave

What rodercot said! Also, in my case changing the setting for DTS receiver was necessary to get movie audio. Not sure if that is because of the soundtracks or what but before that I had interface audio and not video audio. This is hooked to my flat panel right now and not my stereo and it was required <shrug>

On the road tonight but tomorrow night or Friday I can go through all the settings if you want. We'll get you working!

Just about to head off to bed (had to take a night off playing with the damn thing or my wife would have a fit... , but I'll give the hdmi/hdmi setting a try tomorrow night and see how it works. If it doesn't, i'm going to give it one last try from the top, with the latest instructions. It would be great if these mods (latest alsa, latest nVidia) could be included in a new Live release (8.11?).