[xbmcliveuser]

EDIT: I changed the thread subject to more accurately reflect what I think the problem might be.

Please note that despite my user name I am no longer running XBMC Live — just regular XBMC under Ubuntu 10.10.

I turned on my TV tonight and change the input to my Acer Aspire Revo R3610 and went into XBMC only to discover it had been upgraded to Eden. I'm not sure how this happened because I am fairly sure I didn't okay an upgrade, unless maybe it came in with a bunch of Linux kernal upgrades and I missed it somehow (which is hard to believe since it's been several days since I've had one of those).

First thing I noticed, every time I tried to play something, NO SOUND. It popped up an error about "could not initialize audio device" or something to that effect. Went I went to the audio settings they were set to:

Audio Output: Optical/Coax (which was right)
Audio Output Device: Custom
Passthrough Output Device: Custom

After MUCH fiddling (and not a little panic) the only way I could get it to work was to change the settings to:

Audio Output: Analog
Audio Output Device: Defaults(PulseAudio)

What is weird is that the sound IS going to the receiver via an optical cable, even though it says analog. But I'm not getting 5.1 sound!

I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 on an Acer Aspire Revo. Output of aplay -l is:
**** 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 1: ALC662 rev1 Digital [ALC662 rev1 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

If I bring up alsamixer it shows nothing is muted.

Everything just worked under the previous version of XBMC and I can't understand why the upgrade killed my sound, but more to the point, I can't believe that setting audio output to analog is the right thing to do. If anyone else has a Revo and has installed Eden (willingly or accidentally) could you please tell me what you are using for Audio Output, Audio Output Device, and Passthrough Output Device (especially if you know you are getting true 5.1 sound)? I would very much appreciate it! I'm NOT a Linux geek so if you need me to look at something else please tell me where to find it (unless it's obvious).

[xbmcliveuser]

It has been a week now and I still don't have any resolution for this. Has no one else experienced this problem and figured out how to solve it? Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

[tmacka88]

show us your "aplay -L"

[xbmcliveuser]

Okay, after reading JayW's post I have this MOSTLY solved. The settings he's using (his only complaint is that he can't play MP3 files) are:

Audio Output - Optical/Coax
Speaker Configuration - 5.1
Boost volume level on downmix - check
Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver - check
DTS capable receiver - check
Audio output device - Defaults (ALSA)
Passthrough output device - ice958

I tried those settings and it still didn't work… but to make a long story short, I found that when I switched OFF "Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver" then it magically started working! And yes, I can play MP3's just fine. What is weird is that I have an Onkyo receiver that clearly says "Dolby Digital" on the front — but if I press the button for "DTS Surround", it makes no difference, XBMC still won't play sound and claims the audio device isn't initialized if I have "Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver" switched on! Switch it off, and everything works fine!

Did Eden possibly break something regarding Dolby? I don't know how it can know what's on the other end of a SPDIF optical cable anyway (I always thought those only sent data TO the receiver).

Anyway, here's the "aplay -L" output:

$ aplay -L
default
pulse
Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server
front:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
Front speakers
surround40:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital
IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, NVIDIA HDMI
HDMI Audio Output
dmix:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
Direct sample mixing device
dmix:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital
Direct sample mixing device
dmix:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3
HDA NVidia, NVIDIA HDMI
Direct sample mixing device
dsnoop:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
Direct sample snooping device
dsnoop:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital
Direct sample snooping device
dsnoop:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3
HDA NVidia, NVIDIA HDMI
Direct sample snooping device
hw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
Direct hardware device without any conversions
hw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital
Direct hardware device without any conversions
hw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3
HDA NVidia, NVIDIA HDMI
Direct hardware device without any conversions
plughw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
Hardware device with all software conversions
plughw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1
HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital
Hardware device with all software conversions
plughw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3
HDA NVidia, NVIDIA HDMI
Hardware device with all software conversions

I really would like to figure out why Dolby won't work but at least I'm now getting 5.1, which is a huge improvement!

[tmacka88]

have you tried

hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0

in the custom settings for both.
You may need to reboot. Tick DTS DD on before reboot. Give that a go.

[xbmcliveuser]

have you tried

hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0

in the custom settings for both.
You may need to reboot. Tick DTS DD on before reboot. Give that a go.

Wouldn't that send the audio to the HDMI port? That's not want I want to do. I want to send it out the Revo's SPDIF port to a receiver via an optical cable.

I tried it anyway and it still gives me the "Failed to initialize audio device" message.

[tmacka88]

Sorry. Try this then

iec958:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0

Otherwise not sure.

[xbmcliveuser]

Sorry. Try this then

iec958:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0

Otherwise not sure.

Thanks for the suggestions, but no dice with that one, either (same error). Weirdly, when I tried to set it back to what had worked (the settings from JayW's post) as long as I left "Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver" off, for Passthrough output device the plain ice958 option no longer appears, but ice958 (ALSA) does, and it also works as long as I leave Dolby off. I can't say for sure, but I'm really suspicious that Eden screwed up Dolby in some way.

[ingasop]

I have exactly the same problem on Ubuntu 11.10 and XBMC 11. But if I I boot the Revo to Win 7 (It has both Ubuntu and Win 7 installed) then XBMC plays the sound out through the optical out with no problems at all - the amp picks it up as DTS, Dolby Digital, etc depending on the content.

So I think this is a Ubuntu issue rather than a XMBC one. Havent yet managed to get it working yet though

Edit: With all the DTS options ticked and Optical out selected I get the XMBC menu noises no problem, its only when it plays back the movie that it complains. Very odd.

Is the last post here relevant? http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1482408

[ingasop]

I managed to fix it. There is a conflict with pulseaudio and alsa mixer so if you:

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
Reboot the revo
Load XBMC and then you will get sound.

[xbmcliveuser]

I managed to fix it. There is a conflict with pulseaudio and alsa mixer so if you:

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
Reboot the revo
Load XBMC and then you will get sound.

I revisited this thread tonight because my sound stopped working AGAIN after a Linux kernal update (Dolby had somehow got switched back on, and I have no idea how)… grrrr… anyway, I don't advise doing what is suggested here because of this:

$ sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
[sudo] password for jack:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
libshairport1 libsdl-gfx1.2-4 libcec1 screen libtre5 libtinyxml2.6.2 xsel libnfs1
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
indicator-sound libcanberra-pulse pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pulseaudio-module-gconf pulseaudio-module-x11 ubuntu-desktop
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 7 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 4,341 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.

I bolded the "ubuntu-desktop" part because I suspect that most users would NOT want that removed, and you might miss it if you only take a quick glance at what's being removed!

[LH88]

I've got a similar hardware as yours except I've got the Revo 3700 and an Onkyo reciever using HDMI and when my sytem first upgraded to Eden I had no problems at all. Then I got to reading about the new Audio Engine and wanted to try and get blu-ray images to play and managed to mess my installation up to the point I decided to just backup my userdata folder and start over with a fresh eden install. Once that was done I noticed my audio options had changed in XBMC, previously I was using a custom plug nvidia setting and everything was working perfect and after the clean install custom plug was no longer and option, in fact my audio options were very limited for some reason, only having a DTS and AAC capable reciever option whereas previously I had more options available plus the ability to define a custom plug. I decided at this point it probably couldn't hurt to try one of the nightly releases and so I did that and suddenly had more audio options available than ever before, however it still seems to be missing the ability to define a custom plug or maybe i'm missing something but it doesn't really matter as I did eventually get the sound working once again on movies and music but lost the menu sounds when navigating through XBMC although they will play if I am watching a movie and bring up the menu I get menu sounds but once I stop the movie the menu sounds disappear. I'm not at home now where I can check but once I am I will post back and let you know what my current settings are and you can see if they will work for you.

The thing that really gets me though is that even after upgrading to eden 11.0 everything was working perfect, I truly considered it a perfect installation with working menu sounds as well as perfect playback of 1080p mkv's. I still had my previous audio settings using custom plug until I did a clean install and then my problems began. I originally was using a version of XBMC live that I downloaded over a year ago that seemed to have some kind of bug in which the grub menu would not load and so I had lost the ability to go into windows 7 and after several attempts and formatting both windows and linux and ending up with the same results I finally settled on not using my windows 7 on the acer and it simply booted directly into XBMC, since then I've had XBMC running perfect and updating my system via Webmin. Now I once again have access to my windows 7 via the grub menu so at least that is a plus to doing the clean installation.

[LH88]

Here's a screenshot of my Audio settings and as you might notice I don't have AC3 or DTS checked but that's only because I have some unusual needs with my setup, plus I'm still experimenting with everything but so far everything is working as it should on the video's I've tried out things such as avi's mkv's and iso's with no audio problems.



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