Kodi Community Forum

Hi all,

I have put together an AMD X4 system with a Zotac GT 520 video card, and I want to use HDMI for audio.

I tried installing XBMC Live, and then spent the last ~8 hours trying to get sound over HDMI. The current Live install disk does not have NVidia drivers that will work with the GT 520, so they have to be downloaded and installed manually, which will resolve the video issue (XBMC looks beautiful in HD!) but I have been unable to get any sound over HDMI. I've upgraded Alsa, installed a variety of recommended PPAs, followed most every How-To on HDMI that seemed applicable and nothing has worked. Depending on what I have done, launching a video will either display a "can't initialize audio" error, or not, but regardless there is no sound.

As near as I can tell, this seems to be a driver/software issue resolved in later Ubuntu kernel versions, which leads me to my question:

Should I do a minimal Ubuntu install and then install XBMC? If so, what version of Ubuntu? Searching the forums it seems Natty Narwhal is not ready for primetime... Is there another linux variant that might be more appropriate? Or are there any alternatives to XBMC Live that I should consider? (Other than OpenElec--I would prefer a real minimal linux install that can be added to as needed later.)

Or, if you have successfully setup a GT 520 to work with a linux variant of XBMC and have working HDMI audio, I'd love to hear how you did it.

Thanks!

if you want updated drivers for you card and xbmclive see my signature. Also it has 1.0.24 alsa

Th HDMI HOW-TO is literally ALL over the forums for all sorts of Nvidia cards. same fixes apply. please browse forums and look for the answers.

cheers.

Basically XBMC will run on any Linux distro. I wouldn't know why Natty isn't ready for primetime. HDMI is not so much about which distro you run, it about which versions of the kernel, nvidia and alsa you have. In almost any distro it is recommended to install newer versions. Ubuntu uses convenient PPAs for this.

Note that the PPAs X3 is referencing only contain packages for Karmic and Lucid. Not for Natty. I would recommend (official) Ubuntu maintained PPAs such as ubuntu-audio-dev and ubuntu-x-swat-x-updates. These will almost certainly work with the lastest version (Natty ATM), but also with Maverick and Lucid. Stay away from Karmic by the way, it's about to be EOL'ed.

edit: strike that's, it's EOL already.

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried the PPAs from X3 before posting, but had no luck. I also went through most of the recent HDMI how-tos and any thread that mentioned "520" or "GT520". Nothing seemed to work so I inquired here. I'm going to wipe the install and try another time from scratch.

oh my giddy aunt...

you will require alsa configuration and proper xbmc settings, Just using ppas only facilitates the newer HW and bug fixes, not out of box working, perhaps you could give openelec a wirl if you dont mind just having xbmc, the latest openelec is pre-eden and should support your card...

also the most recent HDMI are utter rubbish, please consult proper HOw-tos.

hers somethings you should look at http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=99826

xbmc will require alsa:HDMI on the settings.

Thers a great guide now old but still VERY helpfull on how to setup HDMI via alsa or pulse, I guess you can search yourself for that topic.

tip the guy that wrote the book on HDMI setup via alsa is named alanwww1
though the guide is old Im sure LB06 will the man to help since he has demonstrated an affinity for "bringing" older and helpfull how tos up to date, maybe he can do that one too.

Lets start from the beginning.

What does aplay -l show.
Have you got it working under speaker-test -D
-
Also, how would you rate your Linux skills? I'd suggest going to Debian/Sid over Ubuntu. It'll always roll up to date and you'll never be 'left behind' like happened to people on Lucid, Maverick and soon Natty.

Yes aplay -l is always a good starting point. If I had to guess the problem is that there are 3 hdmi output devices.

Debian Sid will require much more maintenance though and things are not designed to 'not break' in Debian Sid (aka unstable) .

LB06 Wrote:Debian Sid will require much more maintenance though and things are not designed to 'not break' in Debian Sid (aka unstable) .

I'll put Debian Sid up against any Ubuntu release with the number of problems and broken packages. 1 week after Ubuntu is released it's already obsolete. Even before they 'lock' usually there are updates out there.

If people that installed live instead installed Sid, they'd already be up to date. And if you're 'afraid' of Sid, there is always testing.

Now Experimental is really bleeding edge. Sid... Sid's awesome.

"unstable" doesn't mean "will crash and have a lot of bugs" as much as it means "volatile and likely to change".

Yeah I know what Sid is. I ran it for close to 5 years and I loved it before I switched to Arch on my desktop. Of course a rolling release is mostly more up to date than Ubuntu with its bi-annual release cycle. I'm not saying otherwise.

All I'm saying is that a rolling release might not be the best option for an HTPC and someone without too much Linux experience (so someone not like you ), but of course it's perfectly possible. Like I said XBMC will run on almost all flavours, as long as the CPU architecture is supported..

I've got to finish a few things for work before I can get back to the XBMC box, but I'll post those results for you a little later when I do. I did a quick Google on Debian/Sid and I can find a discussion about it on the Debian release page, but don't see any install images or instructions -- just images for stable and testing. What's the best way to try out the Sid release?

drose25 Wrote:I've got to finish a few things for work before I can get back to the XBMC box, but I'll post those results for you a little later when I do. I did a quick Google on Debian/Sid and I can find a discussion about it on the Debian release page, but don't see any install images or instructions -- just images for stable and testing. What's the best way to try out the Sid release?

Do a netinstall using the Squeeze installer and use unstable/sid as sources rather than stable/Squeeze. There should be a netinstall iso on the official mirrors

Well before you go blowing everything away.

Lets try getting it working.

What are the output of:

Don't worry, I wasn't planning on wiping anything. Just thought I might pop in another USB drive and experiment.

I think the problem is a config issue somewhere -- the hardware seems to be recognized, so I've probably made a mistake in config somewhere.

Here's the output you were looking for:

xbmc1@XBMCLive:~$ apt-cache policy alsa-base

xbmc1@XBMCLive:~$ aplay -l

xbmc1@XBMCLive:~$ aplay -L


speaker-test -D complains about a missing argument. Unfortunately "man" doesn't work on the system and I haven't had time to see if Ubuntu uses a different command or if it just wasn't installed.

If I try:



My Audio Settings in XBMC are both currently set to Custom, "hdmi:NVidia". This setting eliminates the "cannot initialize" audio error when playing back a video, but does not produce any sound. I've tried checking/unchecking the various digital sound options with no difference. I've also checked the audio mixer and made sure everything was unmuted, though usually only two iec538(?) channels show up in there. Running alsamixer from the command line brings up the NVidia card, but just shows two unmuted S/PDIF boxes.

Extra info in case it helps, the only audio device that appears when doing a lspci -v is:


xbmc1@XBMCLive:/proc/asound/card0$ ls -l

Note "NVidia" is symlinked to card0. One How-To talked about probemasks based on eld#'s, but my eld#'s didn't match any of the examples in the guide.

As far as linux experience goes, I'm very comfortable with rhel-derived distros, but Debian is new to me and has a few quirks I need to learn.

Try



Does any one of them output noise through all speakers, sequentially?