Some audio funny business

broce · 2011-03-04 03:52

So, I have an Acer Revo 1600 and have been dealing with some funny audio issues for over 3 weeks now have been in and out of the IRC and finally have caved in my research and am just gonna ask for some help in the forums and describe my solutions maybe helping people in the future.

My set up
Acer Revo 1600
Newest version of XBMC Live 10.0
Audio is passed via HDMI to my TV and then from the tv to my speaker system via optical.

Issue #1 no digital audio.
I got this working by changing in System->Settings->System->Audio output

Audio output: Optical/Coax
Speaker Configuration: 5.1
Boost volume level: on
Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver: on
DTS capable receiver: off
Audio output device: Custom
Custom audio device: plughw:0,3
Passthrough output device: Custom
Custom passthrough device: plughw:0,3

And creating an .asoundrc that looks like this

Code:

pcm.!default {

        type plug

        slave {

                pcm "hdmi"

        }

}

With those settings I get some great 5.1 surround sound and DTS audio is compressed to AC3 and played perfectly.

If you are wondering how I got the plughw:0,3 values use the code

Code:

aplay -l

that should print out something similar to this

Code:

@XBMCLive:~$ aplay -l

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****

card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC662 rev1 Analog [ALC662 rev1 Analog]

  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

You can see the HDMI card and device are 0 and 3 which are the values.

Now for the weird stuff: Digital audio is now flawless, but analog audio works about a quarter of the time.

Menu sounds seem to work when ever they want, analog movies work at their own whim and who has any idea about music. In order to get analog sound to work I have found a process that works sometimes other times the only thing that seems to work is to walk away.

The process

play a song - no sound
play a digital audio movie - GREAT sound
play an analog movie - no sound
Run command

Code:

/usr/bin/iecset audio on
mess with the .asoundrc by adding and deleting

Code:

pcm.!default spdif
as the top line.
Repeat until you get sound on the analog movie

I know that seems like it shouldn't work but something happens and it works I have spent hours grepping logs in debug mode and reading countless articles all over the forums and web.

If anyone has any similar issues please share tell me how they make you feel, what comfort food do you go to when your audio just doesn't work? ANYTHING.