[Rubbernuts]

Hi faulknerm,

Hopefully this helps out anyone working with HDMI sound. I read your problem and realized that I myself spent a bunch of time trying to figure out how to get HDMI sound working and even though everyone on this forums is helpful, sometimes they took some shortcuts that got me mixed up.

Hopefully you find this explanation to be of help!

I also have an NVidia output, and I found that the easiest way for me to get the HDMI output sound to work was not to use any of the preset sound settings and instead use a custom mapping to the hardware.

For those of you who are booting directly into XBMC with your new computer and using the confluence skin, click the power button from within the skin and EXIT the software. This will take you to a login screen that allows you to choose which environment you want to be in.

XBMC is the XBMC only software. It takes you directly into the XBMC environment.
XBMCBuntu is the desktop where you can get into the guts of the system, browse the web and interface using a terminal session.

**NOTE** - Keep in mind that the last one you log into, will be the one that your system powers into. Once you are done with XBMCBuntu simply log out and log back in with the XBMC environment selected. From that point on you will always boot into XBMC directly. (Great for guys with wives who don't want to know this is a computer at all!!)

Now that you have logged out of XBMC and are logged into XBMCBuntu you want to run a terminal window.

Click Start -> System Tools -> Click on one of the terminals

Now you are in a terminal window. We want to check some settings now regarding your machine and to do that you must type:

aplay -l

(lowercase L)

You should get an output something like this:

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

card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0, ALC662 rev1 Analog [ALC662 rev1 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevices #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Take note of the HDMI card #1. That is your output for HDMI. The first card is your PCM, not what your looking for.

In this string of info you care about the information in quotes:
card "1": NVidia [HDA NVidia], device "3": HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]

This is what we are going to use when we manually map the information inside XBMC. But first, we have to make sure that your audio in your HDMI is not muted. I have read several posts in these forums about ensuring that your HDMI is not muted, but no one takes the time to really specify where you find this information. To find this, you must run another command in your terminal.

type in : alsamixer

You will get a window pop up with some information regarding your default card. This is an important thing to note, as your computer probably has more than one sound card. In my example above, my HDA Intel is my default card.

Up top in this window, you will see Card: Chip: View: Item: in order. At this point press F5 for ALL.

This opens up both the playback and capture channels on this card.
A muted card is denoted with a "MM" below the bar graph of your volume level.
An unmuted card is denoted with a numerical value such as "00".

At this point make sure that none are muted, and now take note of the F6 option!!! Select sound card.

Press F6: and you will be prompted with a selection window. In my example i have device 0 "HDA Intel" and device 1 "HDA NVidia". Select the second option and you will now see that you probably only have one option. This option is probably the 'S/PDIF' and it most likely will have a 'MM'. I just installed Eden 11 yesterday on a fresh install and mine was muted out of the box. Good chance yours is as well.

Once you have completed this press ESC to exit and take you back to your terminal window.

Now, rather than logging out of XBMCBuntu, just launch XBMC from within this desktop and lets make some changes to your Audio output.

Once XBMC launches get into your audio settings by:
Settings -> System -> Audio Output

Audio output = HDMI
Speaker Configuration = 2.0 (2.0 because I am using a TV. Change this to your setup EG. 5.1. Also note here that if you improperly set this to 5.1 and your using a TV, you will probably only hear background noise from your show if it is encoded with dolby digital)
Boost Level on Downmix = yes
AC3 Capable = No (No for me as Im on a TV, yours probably will be yes)
DTS Capable = No (Again I am going straight to a TV)

Here's where the real meat and potatoes is:

Since we found out the information earlier on aplay -l and found:
card "1": NVidia [HDA NVidia], device "3": HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]

Audio Ouput Device = Custom
custom audio device = PLUGHW:1,3 (Where 1 and 3 come from the quotes)
Passthrough output device = custom
Custom passthrough device = PLUGHW:1,3 (Again 1&3 came from the quotes)

Now there are other posts that can explain how to create your own script and do a bunch of other fancy things based on the frequency of your audio (MP3/2CH, 44.1kHz CD, 48 kHz HDMI) but I am betting that you are just like me and want to get it working. You will revisit this at a later date if you decide this isn't enough.

At this point, you can relaunch XBMC and try a playback from one of your video files.

Congrats. At this point you probably have it all up and running and your happy as a clam!

Hopefully you find my first post of value. I have been leeching info off this forum for about a month, and I felt that I am finally at a level of understanding to give back to the community.

Thanks everyone for your support and excellent work on Eden.

--Rubbernuts