[Pexter]

Hi all and happy new year!

I have XBMC installed on a Fujitsu-Siemens PC with a built in soundcard. The soundcard works fine but it only support stereo and have no digital output.

I have an external Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX (SB0300) USB card that have all sorts of outputs that I'm trying to use instead of the built in soundcard, but no luck so far. According to Alsa documentation the alsa-driver is supposed to support this external soundcard.

Any ideas how to get it working?

(It might be just as simple as pointing XBMC to the other card, but I'm a newbie in Linux so I have no idea what it's enumerated as and such...)

I have tried to start XBMC with the internal soundcard disabled but with that configuration alsamixer wouldn't even start...

Thanks for your help with this! (If it's even possible!)

[harryzimm]

Hi Pexter. This worked for me.

Disable your onboard soundcard in bios.

Add this line to the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base file.

# autoloader aliases
install sound-slot-0 /sbin/modprobe snd_usb_audio

And commented this
#options snd-usb-audio index=1
#options snd-usb-usx2y index=-2

Code:

sudo pico /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

You will end up with something like this.

Code:

# autoloader aliases
install sound-slot-0 /sbin/modprobe snd_usb_audio
install sound-slot-1 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-1
install sound-slot-2 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-2
install sound-slot-3 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-3
install sound-slot-4 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-4
install sound-slot-5 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-5
install sound-slot-6 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-6
install sound-slot-7 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-7

# Cause optional modules to be loaded above generic modules
install snd /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-ioctl32 ; : ; }
install snd-pcm /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-pcm && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-pcm-oss ; : ; }
install snd-mixer /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-mixer && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-mixer-oss ; : ; }
install snd-seq /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-seq && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-seq-midi ; /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-seq-oss ; : ; }
install snd-rawmidi /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-rawmidi && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-seq-midi ; : ; }
# Cause optional modules to be loaded above sound card driver modules
install snd-emu10k1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-emu10k1 $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe -Qb snd-emu10k1-synth ; }
install snd-via82xx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-via82xx $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe -Qb snd-seq ; }

# Load saa7134-alsa instead of saa7134 (which gets dragged in by it anyway)
install saa7134 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install saa7134 $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe -Qb saa7134-alsa ; : ; }

# Load snd-seq for devices that don't have hardware midi;
#   Ubuntu #26283, #43682, #56005; works around Ubuntu #34831 for
#   non-Creative Labs PCI hardware
install snd /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd && { /sbin/modprobe -Qb snd-seq ; }
# Prevent abnormal drivers from grabbing index 0
options bt87x index=-2
options cx88_alsa index=-2
options saa7134-alsa index=-2
options snd-atiixp-modem index=-2
options snd-intel8x0m index=-2
options snd-via82xx-modem index=-2
#options snd-usb-audio index=-2
#options snd-usb-usx2y index=-2
options snd-usb-caiaq index=-2
# Ubuntu #62691, enable MPU for snd-cmipci
options snd-cmipci mpu_port=0x330 fm_port=0x388

save and reboot.
cheers.

[Pexter]

Worked like a charm!! Great thanks!!

[erka81]

Had to create a login to thank you for the help. This helped me out. I couldn't disable the onboard soundcard in bios (stupid HP bios) but that didn't matter.

[topfs2]

Isn´t it enough to do:
aplay -l
In terminal and it will tell you the cards.
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: AD198x Digital [AD198x Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

As you see I don´t have 2 cards but if you´d had they should come up as card 1,
then set in audio settings of XBMC
plughw:1,0 or plugpcm:1,0 (can´t recall wich)
instead of default.

[harryzimm]

I tried plughw:1,0 in xbmc, it works but screws up the channel mappings in 5.1 surround. I guess if your downmixing audio it wont matter.

cheers.