[borisdenice]

Chris,

Thank you very much for sharing your experience with us.
I really appreciate it.

I will give a try to your proposed solution in the coming days.

However, I have a question: Do you think there is a way to do without the a52 plugin?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm worried about running in potential issues with this plugin: performance, stability, loss of quality.

What are your thoughts? or experience so far?

[alda]

I have this error :
Cannot open shared library /usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_a52.so

I checked my system and file is missing.
What I must install to have this file on this path ? :
/usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_a52.so

Or is possible only copy it ? can you send me ?

Alda

[borisdenice]

no. you shouldn't do that.
you need to install the alsa plugins properly.
I would suggest:
sudo apt-get install alsa-plugins
But I though it came by default with alsa install...

[alda]

oou

sudo apt-get install alsa-plugins
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package alsa-plugins


Alda

[alda]

Maybe XBMC live is without this package....

no. you shouldn't do that.
you need to install the alsa plugins properly.
I would suggest:
sudo apt-get install alsa-plugins
But I though it came by default with alsa install...

[borisdenice]

or maybe I gave you a wrong answer
sudo apt-get install libasound2-plugins

[alda]

Yes, now I have installed files :

/usr/lib/alsa-lib$ ls
libasound_module_conf_pulse.so libasound_module_rate_samplerate_best.so
libasound_module_ctl_arcam_av.so libasound_module_rate_samplerate_linear.so
libasound_module_ctl_oss.so libasound_module_rate_samplerate_medium.so
libasound_module_ctl_pulse.so libasound_module_rate_samplerate_order.so
libasound_module_pcm_oss.so
libasound_module_rate_samplerate.so
libasound_module_pcm_pulse.so libasound_module_rate_speexrate_best.so
libasound_module_pcm_upmix.so libasound_module_rate_speexrate_medium.so
libasound_module_pcm_usb_stream.so
libasound_module_rate_speexrate.so
libasound_module_pcm_vdownmix.so
smixer


but file which is alsa searching :
Cannot open shared library /usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_a52.so

is missing

Alda

[borisdenice]

Looks like the alsa and alsa plugins package from the Ubuntu dist and XBMCLive PPA don't have what we expect.
run these commands and have a look at what you have:
aptitude show libasound2
aptitude show libasound2-plugins

Then you'll have to follow someting like this:
http://monespaceperso.org/blog-en/2010/0...oala-9-10/
http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Download
Have a look in the ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/plugins/a...23.tar.bz2 for instance.
You will find the a52 lib.
good luck.
you might want to use an appropriate thread for this now. You'll probably find that in this Forum.

[alda]

What is interested, I did a update to latest version but this file :

/usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_a52.so

is still missing.

Alda

can somebody check if this file is realy in this directory ?

[alda]

I did a lot of test and with this config :

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

pcm.both {
type route
slave {
pcm multi
channels 6
}
ttable.0.0 1.0
ttable.1.1 1.0
ttable.0.2 1.0
ttable.1.3 1.0
ttable.0.4 1.0
ttable.1.5 1.0
}

pcm.multi {
type multi
slaves.a {
pcm "tv"
channels 2
}
slaves.b {
pcm "receiver"
channels 2
}
slaves.c {
pcm "analog"
channels 2
}
bindings.0.slave a
bindings.0.channel 0
bindings.1.slave a
bindings.1.channel 1
bindings.2.slave b
bindings.2.channel 0
bindings.3.slave b
bindings.3.channel 1
bindings.4.slave c
bindings.4.channel 0
bindings.5.slave c
bindings.5.channel 1
}

pcm.tv {
type hw
card 0
device 3
channels 2
}

pcm.receiver {
type hw
card 0
device 1
channels 2
}

pcm.analog {
type hw
card 0
device 0
channels 2
}


I have stereo output to HDMI and to analog. Default output HDMI in XBMC.

Now how to change it to have stereo HDMI and 5.1 analog.

Alda

[chris80]

What is interested, I did a update to latest version but this file :

/usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_a52.so

is still missing.

Alda

can somebody check if this file is realy in this directory ?

I updated my ALSA install using this method:

1. Get AlsaUpgrade-1.0.23-2.tar from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6589810
2. Extract the tar file
3. sudo ./AlsaUpgrade-1.0.23-2.sh -d
4. sudo ./AlsaUpgrade-1.0.23-2.sh -c
5. sudo ./AlsaUpgrade-1.0.23-2.sh -i
6. reboot
Takes a while on an atom.

[alda]

one question to alsa config file :
noe I have in XBMC checked - downmix to stereo and analog output.
When I will uncheck downmix to stereo, all outputs I will have 6 channels ?

and I must modify conf file like this ? :

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

pcm.both {
type route
slave {
pcm multi
channels 18
}
ttable.0.0 1.0
ttable.1.1 1.0
ttable.2.2 1.0
ttable.3.3 1.0
ttable.4.4 1.0
ttable.5.5 1.0
ttable.0.6 1.0
.
.
.
till
ttable.5.17 1.0

}

pcm.multi {
type multi
slaves.a {
pcm "tv"
channels 6
}
slaves.b {
pcm "receiver"
channels 6
}
slaves.c {
pcm "analog"
channels 6
}
bindings.0.slave a
bindings.0.channel 0
bindings.1.slave a
bindings.1.channel 1
bindings.2.slave b
bindings.2.channel 2
bindings.3.slave b
bindings.3.channel 3
.
.
.
till
bindings.5.slave c
bindings.5.channel 17
}

pcm.tv {
type hw
card 0
device 3
}

pcm.receiver {
type hw
card 0
device 1
}

pcm.analog {
type hw
card 0
device 0
}

is it correct ?

Alda

[Flomaster]

I have a Yamaha receiver with multi zone control I have 2 speakers in the backyard I use when out back hanging out.

problem is my Yamaha does not take kindly to HDMI audio being used for the others zones so what I have done is added a set of rca cables from my DirecTv box to the same input as my HDMI I get TV sound out back.

last night I was BBQ and had shoutcast playing in the living room and wanted to listen out back so I turned on zone 2 set input to the "HTPC" input and didn't have sound. I them remembered oh HDMI = no sound so I grabbed a Coax cable and plugged in into the Zotac HTPC and into my receiver. still no sound. so then I grabbed a cable splitter and plugged in my COax into my red/white inputs on the Yamaha. nothing still. I grabbed a small 2.5" head phone cable to rca connector and tried it yet for the last time no sound .


so I'd like to get SPDIF sound from XBMC to my yamaha with out effecting my perfect HDMI setup. I currently play everything I can through at it and don't want to mess it up.


I am running XBMC-LIVE so I 've no access to any desktop applications like >settings>advanced>sound etc. I use Putty and my Win 7 Laptop for any terminal commands.

-=Jason=-

[Flomaster]

*cough*

-=Jason=-

[sircube]

This is what I am using:

My starting point was the config posted here http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=484730&postcount=8 and I used the channel mapping for downmixing provided in the xbmc source. The a52 plugin was picky about number of channels sent to it so it always gets and encodes to 6 channels even with stereo (the others are just empty channels) otherwise it failed to work.

XBMC audio output is set to custom which uses alsa:xbmc, this uses pcm.xbmc which uses transfer tables allocate and mix channels then passes it to pcm.multi then binds the channels to specific devices. Passthrough is set no nothing (blank) as it conflicted with my config if it was set as anything.

Some of the devices listed are most probably not needed but I have not had a chance to test a cleaned up version yet.

Should be simple to tweak to cope with 7.1 channels if needed.

Not had any problems with it on my Revo 3610 (currently on SVN 28256, ALSA 1.0.23, ubuntu 9.10, kernel 2.6.31-17-generic)


Let me know if you spot any mistakes as I didn't have a clue how alsa config worked before I started tweaking.

Chris, thanks for sharing your script. Work well for me.

Is there a chance to have the Stereo sound (music) untouched on SPDIF and only upscale in case source has more than 2 channels? In this way the music would not be reencoded for SPDIF. Just a question...

thx.