2010-04-10, 14:17
Hey folks,
sorry for creating another thread about this issue, but I couldn't find a solution yet, reading through the other posted issues.
I got a clean, new Lucid Beta2 installation AMD64bit. I got XBMC Camelot compiled from source, and almost everything is running smoothly. Latest Nvidia driver from launchpad PPA.
I thought this time, I'll try alsa without going through the pain of completely removing pulse.
So I followed some howto of howto simply switching to alsa sound system from pulse.
Meaning pulse IS still present and running as a process, but I used "gstreamer-properties" to switch to alsa as default.
Works basically fine, sound in Lucid is present, both via HDMI to TV and SPDIF on my 5.1 receiver.
Problem now is, that movies with 5.1 digital sound, only AC-3 so far tested, dont play sound but give me "failed to initialize audio device". Other movies without digital sound work fine, navigation sounds also present.
In the log I get these errors related to alsa:
14:05:46 T:140298483095312 M:1467158528 ERROR: Initialize - failed to open custom device default:AES0=0x6,AES1=0x82,AES2=0x0,AES3=0x2
, retry with default default
14:05:46 T:140298483095312 M:1467158528 ERROR: Initialize - pcm_open_lconf, alsa error: -16 - Device or resource busy
14:05:46 T:140298483095312 M:1467158528 ERROR: Creating a Null Audio Renderer, Check your audio settings as this should not happen
Do I have to create a asound.conf or .asoundrc file? Because I don't have either of them with the default alsa installation on Lucid, they are simply not present.
Alsa packages installed:
alsa-base install
alsa-utils install
bluez-alsa install
gstreamer0.10-alsa install
Alright, I figured it out ... got alsa working including 5.1 passthrough in XBMC.
Working now:
- Ubuntu Gnome desktop sounds, both via HDMI and SPDIF, except for system sounds, e.g. startup. Playing back a flash movie in firefox though is perfectly fine with sound. I'll look into getting system sounds back too.
- XBMC Navigation Sounds, both HDMI and SPDIF
- XBMC MP3 Playback, both HDMI and SPDIF
- XBMC regular Movies, without Dolby Digital. Mostly XVID here with MP3 Audio, both HDMI and SPDIF
- XBMC Dolby Digital 5.1 via passthrough, on SPDIF. HDMI makes no sense, since I don't have a HDMI audio receiver, I use SPDIF only to my receiver. But I guess it'll work via HDMI to receivers too.
Here's what I did:
Go to System - Preferences - Sound. There on the Hardware tab. Chose a profile on the bottom, that does NOT contain anything related to digital or IEC. I chose Analog Stereo Duplex. My theory is, that if you go digital there, pulse is blocking the digital output. The sound preferences windows seems to be only related to pulse, not alsa at all.
Now open up a terminal window and start "gstreamer-properties". On the Audio tab, select ALSA - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, for Default Output. As Device, choose the digital device, in my case: ALC889A (my sound chip) digital.
I selected ALSA also for Default Input, though I don't think Input has any effect, as long as you don't use a mic or something.
In XBMC, I got both devices for audio and passthrough set to IEC958.
And voila :-) I am enjoying happy sound via Alsa in Ubuntu and XBMC, via HDMI and SPDIF, including passthrough in XBMC.
Hope this can help others to avoid audio troubles ...
boba
sorry for creating another thread about this issue, but I couldn't find a solution yet, reading through the other posted issues.
I got a clean, new Lucid Beta2 installation AMD64bit. I got XBMC Camelot compiled from source, and almost everything is running smoothly. Latest Nvidia driver from launchpad PPA.
I thought this time, I'll try alsa without going through the pain of completely removing pulse.
So I followed some howto of howto simply switching to alsa sound system from pulse.
Meaning pulse IS still present and running as a process, but I used "gstreamer-properties" to switch to alsa as default.
Works basically fine, sound in Lucid is present, both via HDMI to TV and SPDIF on my 5.1 receiver.
Problem now is, that movies with 5.1 digital sound, only AC-3 so far tested, dont play sound but give me "failed to initialize audio device". Other movies without digital sound work fine, navigation sounds also present.
In the log I get these errors related to alsa:
14:05:46 T:140298483095312 M:1467158528 ERROR: Initialize - failed to open custom device default:AES0=0x6,AES1=0x82,AES2=0x0,AES3=0x2
, retry with default default
14:05:46 T:140298483095312 M:1467158528 ERROR: Initialize - pcm_open_lconf, alsa error: -16 - Device or resource busy
14:05:46 T:140298483095312 M:1467158528 ERROR: Creating a Null Audio Renderer, Check your audio settings as this should not happen
Do I have to create a asound.conf or .asoundrc file? Because I don't have either of them with the default alsa installation on Lucid, they are simply not present.
Alsa packages installed:
alsa-base install
alsa-utils install
bluez-alsa install
gstreamer0.10-alsa install
Alright, I figured it out ... got alsa working including 5.1 passthrough in XBMC.
Working now:
- Ubuntu Gnome desktop sounds, both via HDMI and SPDIF, except for system sounds, e.g. startup. Playing back a flash movie in firefox though is perfectly fine with sound. I'll look into getting system sounds back too.
- XBMC Navigation Sounds, both HDMI and SPDIF
- XBMC MP3 Playback, both HDMI and SPDIF
- XBMC regular Movies, without Dolby Digital. Mostly XVID here with MP3 Audio, both HDMI and SPDIF
- XBMC Dolby Digital 5.1 via passthrough, on SPDIF. HDMI makes no sense, since I don't have a HDMI audio receiver, I use SPDIF only to my receiver. But I guess it'll work via HDMI to receivers too.
Here's what I did:
Go to System - Preferences - Sound. There on the Hardware tab. Chose a profile on the bottom, that does NOT contain anything related to digital or IEC. I chose Analog Stereo Duplex. My theory is, that if you go digital there, pulse is blocking the digital output. The sound preferences windows seems to be only related to pulse, not alsa at all.
Now open up a terminal window and start "gstreamer-properties". On the Audio tab, select ALSA - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, for Default Output. As Device, choose the digital device, in my case: ALC889A (my sound chip) digital.
I selected ALSA also for Default Input, though I don't think Input has any effect, as long as you don't use a mic or something.
In XBMC, I got both devices for audio and passthrough set to IEC958.
And voila :-) I am enjoying happy sound via Alsa in Ubuntu and XBMC, via HDMI and SPDIF, including passthrough in XBMC.
Hope this can help others to avoid audio troubles ...
boba