[madmunky]

Hi Everyone,

I've just brought myself a new motherboard which is a Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H which uses the realtek ALC889A - http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Moth...uctID=2691

The problem is I need to output the sound via HDMI but when I change the default device to HDMI/plug:hdmi/plughw:0,3 I get no sound and XBMC reports the error "Failed to initialize Audio Device"

[qnox]

did you tray alsamixer -c 1 and unmutting it? then do alsactl store as root

here is my .asoundrc from homedir of user running XBMC:

Code:

pcm.!spdif {
     type hw
     card 1
     device 3
}

pcm.!default {
     type plug
     slave {
           pcm "spdif"
     }
}

be careful - I have my HDMI on card.device 1.3, you propably should use 0.3 - to find it exacly use aplay -l

in XBMC I had only default for both output.

with that settings I can use analog or digital output.

[madmunky]

Sorry some noob questions, if I do "alsamixer -c 1" it says invalid command so i did "alsamixer -c" but I cant see anything about HDMI the IEC958 are all unmuted but you can not adjust the volume.

I did a aplay -l and it lists two device the analog and digital

How do I take screen dumps and also how do I see my .asoundrc

Thanks for any assistance, If I can the sound working linux would be so much nicer than windows for my MediaCenter

[qnox]

my mistake, alsamixer -c 1 is working when, for example like me, you have two audio devices in system, 0 normal audio and and 1 for HDMI. Basicly -c switch choose for witch audio device should alsamixer use.

please, insert output aplay -l from your system

and to display any file you could use cat filename

[madmunky]

Thanks Gnox for taking the time to help

Here is the output from aplay -l

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC885 Analog [ALC885 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: ALC885 Digital [ALC885 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Any ideas on what to try next?

[alanwww1]

You either don't have the hdmi device enabled in BIOS or you have an ancient ALSA installed.

What Distro do you use ?

[madmunky]

HDMI is enabled in the BIOS (Well set to Auto as you only get the option of Auto or Disable) and works in windows and im using the lastest XBMC Live CD installed to the HDD

I've just downloaded Ubuntu 9.04 so I'll see if I get any sound from that

[screamer]

HDMI is enabled in the BIOS (Well set to Auto as you only get the option of Auto or Disable) and works in windows and im using the lastest XBMC Live CD installed to the HDD

I've just downloaded Ubuntu 9.04 so I'll see if I get any sound from that

I have the same MB and the same problem on XBMC Live.
aplay -l only lists analog and digital out. No HDMI

I don't dare to try updating things at the time because it's working very well for me right now except from hdmi audio.

Please let me know if you find a solution to this.

[madmunky]

Still no luck with Ubuntu 9.04 im installed now the mini install and using the XBMScript here... http://www.xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=57764

Anyone got any other ideas on things I can try?

[jpreville]

i had a hard time.. with this one... i have a couple Acer lowprofile's with ALC888

what i ended up doing was going to System/Preferences/Sound

made sure my playback devices where set to Alsa Digital.

as long as your aplay -l showed both analog and digital.

then within xbmc. i kept it at analog but set the output to surround51.
then the sound came through the hdmi cable to surround sound system.

not sure why.. took a lot of playing around... but at least i got sound going through the hdmi cable..

john

[madmunky]

What distro are you using?

[madmunky]

I've got it working!!!!

Right....

Alsa is too old to support the HDMI on the nvidia card I was running 1.0.18rc3 to find out what version your using do

cat /proc/asound/version

the go to this page and download the install script which will update Alsa to the latest version the do

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6589810

sudo ./AlsaUpgrade-1.0.21-4.sh -di

Follow the onscreen instructions and then reboot your system.

Do the following

aplay -l

which should now list the HDMI port

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC889A Analog [ALC889A Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: ALC889A Digital [ALC889A Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Then do

alsamixer

and unmute and set the volumes as required "m" to unmute and up and down arrows to adjust the volume.

Go back into XBMC and under Settings - System - Audio Hardware set it to

Audio output - Digital
AC3 - As Required
DTS - As Required
Audio output device - plug:hdmi
Passthough output device - hdmi

Go play a film/music and the sound will kick in and all works fine...

Thanks to everyone who helped me out, hopefully this will help other people out also

[pasqualz]

Madmunky or anyone else,
Will the steps you took for your motherboard work for any motherboard with an integrated sound card. I have a Zotac Ionitx-A-U and would love to get sound out of the HDMI port. Can anyone assist
Thanks
Pasqual

[madmunky]

Not sure if the same way will work with all boards but it will update your ALSA to the latest version so if that is the problem this should fix it.

[JumJum]

I had the same problem I had with my notebook, and it wasn't too much trouble to fix.
What the output of this command?

cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#* | grep Nvidia