[kristoffer_1]

Hi all.
I have a motherboard with a AC97 soundcontroller on. After hours of googling,testing and reading post I can not get the SPDIF to work.

So I am now looking for a soundcard internal (PCI) or external (USB) that will let me throughput 5.1 digital sound from XBMC.

I do not want to buy a new motherboard and a new CPU only for this remaining issue.

[prae5]

Before throwing money on a new card, might be an idea to tell people what you have done, your hardware, config/settings, etc...

[kristoffer_1]

You are right...

here is my setup:

HW
CPU:AMD Athlon 64, 2000 MHz (10 x 200) 3200+
Motherboard:Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (3 PCI, 2 PCI-E x1, 2 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR DIMM, Audio, Dual Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)
Integrated soundcard:Realtek ALC850 @ nVIDIA nForce4 SLI (CK8-04) - Audio Codec Interface
Soundcard is connected to a amplifier using SPDIF.

SW
Ubuntu 9.10
XBMC 9.11 Beta1

XBMC settings:
AUDIO OUTPUT DEVICE: default
PASSTHROUGH AUDIO DEVICE: iec958


Things I have done:
I have tried the follwoing http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=XBMC_for_Lin...ital_audio but i didn

I hear sound when playing following:
*mp3 in gnome-desktop ( pulseaudio I assume)
*mp3 in xbmc
*menu sounds
And since the only connection to the amp is the spdif cable I think that it is related to the SW when it comes to playing a 5.1 source.

Status
The only connection to the amp is the spdif cable I think that it is related to the SW when it comes to playing a 5.1 source, because same HW setup is working for mp3 playback.

anyone got an idea how to get multichannel throughput to work?
The amp does not support HDMI so that is not an option.

[KRayner]

I have the exact same problem. I am using XBMC Live Camelot though, with a different nforce 4 Mobo (same CPU) however it has the exact same audio chipset. (using an Optical cable connected to a Logitech Z-5500 setup)

I know this will work if I install windows and then XBMC but I would really rather just stick to the live version.

Anyone out there have a solution?

[rodercot]

The CK804 has always been a PIA, I have never had problems up until yesterday on a clean install (9.10) for some reason as soon as you start to install programs or updates of the clean install it throws everything for a loop. anyhow, same issue of no spidif - lights on and no one is home. I reverted alsa back to 1.0.17 trying and then up to 1.0.21 trying to get it to work, finally I just disabled it and installed my test x-plosion 7.1 - worked first crack no changes needed other that unmuting iec958 in alsamixer.

Regards,

Dave

[KRayner]

Hey Dave, I'm not really following, did you solve our problem? After googling 'CK804' I see you seem to be referring to the Nforce platform, however this seems more like a Realtek Audio chipset issue, no?

[grevian]

I dunno if you can get your onboard audio to work, but I've always had great success with the Chaintech AV-710, It's a dirt cheap pci soundcard based on the excellent envy24-S chip, if you google around for it you'll see the details and reviews, it's a bit older now but an awesome card. I had some problems with suspending my XBMC system to RAM while I had it installed though, so just a heads up on that.