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I would like to enable passthrough audio for DTS tracks, which my receiver (logitech Z-5500) is capable of decoding. However, I am unable to find an IEC958 device listed in passthrough audio settings. My sound card is integrated into my motherboard (Asus P5B deluxe). The motherboard has three sets of audio outputs: optical, coax, and the 5.1 channel analog 1/8" jacks. I would like to connect the SPDIF toslink/optical connection to the Z-5500. I am running Debian Wheezy and XBMC 12.0 Frodo.

For Audio Output Devide, I have three options:
(1.) Default (HDA Intel AD198x Analog) <<== This is the only option that will actually play audio files. Nothing else produces sound
(2.) HDA Intel, AD198x Digital S/PDIF
(3.) HDA Intel, AD198x Analog

For Passthrough Output Device, I have only one option (and it will not let me change it)
(1.) HDA Intel, AD198x Digital S/PDIF

The current state of audio:
2 Channel audio works only if DTS / AC3 / AAC is forced to down-convert to two-channel-PCM.
5.1 Channel passthrough does NOT work. It plays a digital "noise."

My understanding is that if I can get IEC958 listed in alsamixer, I should be able to output DTS in passthrough audio. The problem is that IEC958 is not listed in alsamixer.

Code:
root@xmbc-streamer:/home/oddworld# aplay -l

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

card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]

  Subdevices: 0/1

  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: AD198x Digital [AD198x Digital]

  Subdevices: 1/1

  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

root@xmbc-streamer:/home/oddworld#

Code:
root@xmbc-streamer:/home/oddworld# aplay -L

null

    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)

default:CARD=Intel

    HDA Intel, AD198x Analog

    Default Audio Device

sysdefault:CARD=Intel

    HDA Intel, AD198x Analog

    Default Audio Device

front:CARD=Intel,DEV=0

    HDA Intel, AD198x Analog

    Front speakers

surround40:CARD=Intel,DEV=0

    HDA Intel, AD198x Analog

    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers

surround41:CARD=Intel,DEV=0

    HDA Intel, AD198x Analog

    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers

surround50:CARD=Intel,DEV=0

    HDA Intel, AD198x Analog

    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers

surround51:CARD=Intel,DEV=0

    HDA Intel, AD198x Analog

    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers

surround71:CARD=Intel,DEV=0

    HDA Intel, AD198x Analog

    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers

[b]iec958:CARD=Intel,DEV=0

    HDA Intel, AD198x Digital

    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output[/b]

root@xmbc-streamer:/home/oddworld#

Code:
root@xmbc-streamer:/home/oddworld# lspci

00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82P965/G965 Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)

01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82P965/G965 PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)

1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)

1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)

1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)

1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)

1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)

1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)

1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02)

1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)

1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)

1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)

1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)

1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev f2)

1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HB/HR (ICH8/R) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)

1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HR/HO/HH (ICH8R/DO/DH) 6 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 02)

1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)

00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G71 [GeForce 7950 GT] (rev a1)

00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)

00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB363 SATA/IDE Controller (rev 02)

00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB363 SATA/IDE Controller (rev 02)

03.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link) [iOHCI-Lynx]

04.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 13)

root@xmbc-streamer:/home/oddworld#

Code:
root@xmbc-streamer:/home/oddworld# lsmod | grep snd*

snd_hda_codec_analog    78059  1

snd_hda_intel          26345  2

snd_hda_codec          78031  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_analog

snd_hwdep              13186  1 snd_hda_codec

snd_pcm                63900  3 snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel

snd_page_alloc         13003  2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel

snd_seq                45093  0

snd_seq_device         13176  1 snd_seq

snd_timer              22917  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm

snd                    52850  11 snd_timer,snd_seq_device,snd_seq,snd_pcm,snd_hwdep,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_analog

soundcore              13065  1 snd

root@xmbc-streamer:/home/oddworld#

This is a screenshot of alsamixer, note that there are no sources to the left or the right of the active screen (iec958 is not present at all)

So, please help me diagnose the problem. And as always, thank you for your help!

Check your BIOS to see if there is any chipset settings related to audio to see if thers anything you can enable or set to auto related to audio in BIOS.

You dont have any devices called IEC958 yours are AD198x instead.

Use digital/spdif for both output and passthrough.in XBMC audio settings

a Screenshot of XBMC audio settings would help.

You want also to make sure alsa-utils libasound2 installed.

uNi

Alsa utils was it. For anyone in the future reading this post, you can install using:

Code:
aptitude install alsa-utils

Thanks for your help, I cannot believe I let this go on for so long having such a simple solution.
Both sources are set to SPDIF Digital.
2 channel PCM works. DTS decodes in receiver for HD audio signals. 5.1 passthru is complete!

I was confused because in the past, using XBMCbuntu, my SPDIF out was displayed as "IEC958"

Success at last, ++++++1 someone is fixed up Big Grin

uNi

(2012-12-24, 21:06)uNiversal Wrote: [ -> ]Success at last, ++++++1 someone is fixed up

uNi

I'd like to give a +1, but I cannot see an option. Maybe my account is too new?

That would be why - but I owe uNiversal a +1 anyways for helping out so much with Linux setup issues - consider it done Wink

Wonderful, thanks.

And to be clear, I installed a few packages, so I am not quite sure which one actually fixed the problem. Future readers should be sure to install these packages as well:

Code:
alsa-tools, alsa-oss, libmad0, libmad0-dev, libmadlib, alsa-utils

Just for thought, what happens if you press F6 in alsamixer? In your screenshot "Chip" says "Analog devices", meaning all those values only apply to card 0, device 0 (in aplay -l). This seems to be a common pitfall for people (trying to unmute the SPDIF output but not using the correct chip in alsamixer).

Please let me know if this helps!
Thanks again for your help!

I don'ẗ know, perhaps. Thanks for the screenshot.

Actually, I think I'm getting a better feel for the problem.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the audio will stop working after watching a movie (the movie used AC3 sound, which was set to passthrough). Once the audio cut out, I couldn't listen to anything, pass through or not. After rebooting, the problem still persisted. No audio. But after starting 3-4 tracks, the audio just randomly "kicked on" and started playing everything like normal.
I did not change any settings at all, so it seems like a random problem.

Very strange.
I'm going to swap the cable and see if that was it. For now, any ideas?

I've had similar problems, although only with HD audio tracks. I think it's a bug in AudioEngine, although it hasn't happened to me for quite some time now.

It would most likely help if you could enable debug logging and post the log when the audio cut out happens. Perhaps someone can examine it.

Interesting. I wonder if there's anything I can do to help (produce log files, help debug?)

My xbmc package is from the Debian.Multimedia repo, so it's a week or two behind current xbmc release.

Anyone else getting that error? It's kind of strange and I am having a hard time reproducing it.

I have the same problem, I think. Although for me it happens every time I want to play a video.

I'm using audio on motherboard, digital optical output connected to my receiver/amp. With XBMCbuntu 11 audio worked perfectly. I had it configured for pass-through audio for 5.1 dolby digital, DTS and AAC.

I then did a fresh install using XBMCbuntu 12, and now I have audio issues. I also ran an apt-update, apt-upgrade to update all the packages, it's on XBMC 12 RC2 now. I configured the audio settings to use Coax/Opitical in XBMC 12, choosing the digital output and configuring the audio passthrough.

The problem is that sometimes the audio works, other times it doesn't.

My amp displays the type of audio it receives, so it will usually say DTS 5.1, or Dolby Digital, or just PCM depending on the source input when I start playing a video.

More often than not, in XBMC 12, that display in the amp will flicker, swapping between displaying no audio input and the audio type the video contains. Result is that there is no audio playback. If I stop the video and then play it again it will sometimes work correctly. But this usually takes about 5 to 10 tries of stopping and starting the video to get the audio working. When I say working, I mean the receiver doesn't do the 'flickering' thing and there is actual audio coming through the speakers.

The other problem is randomly after watching a movie or video the audio would just stop completely. Trying to play a new video the amp's audio input display is just blank, like it's not receiving any audio. The only way I've found to fix this is to reboot the XBMC box.

This is my list of devices:

@owl:~# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: AD198x Digital [AD198x Digital]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I think our problems are exactly the same. Glad it's not just me. What motherboard?
I'm on the Asus P5B Deluxe.

oddworld

un1versal

oddworld

un1versal

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DDDamian

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negge

oddworld

negge

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negge

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AndreMiller

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