[blazini]

Still can't get surround working through HDMI an my Acer Revo

Installed Lucid

Installed the 256.25 nvidia drivers

I used the asound and HDA-Intel .conf files posted

I still don't have any IEC sliders in alsamixer and PAVcontrol only shows "Digital Stereo HDMI" (which works fine)

[Roelio]

How did you installed Lucid ? On my Revo I tried 32-bit PC (x86) but it won't even start then.. Or did u used 64-bit PC (amd64) ?


Did you installed the Alsa and update? http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=XBMCbuntu#Install_ALSA

[blazini]

I've got the single core Revo (1600 or whaterver it is), so I used 32bit. I just download the ISO, then use the USB startup disk creator tool to make a Lucid USB stick. Then just installed as normal.

I did just ubgrade to Alsa 1.0.23. The script wasn't working for me earlier but I just got it to work, but it didn't fix my issue

[srv1973]

you have to unmute the two iec958. select them and press m on the keyboard. they should turn green. In xbmc go to system-system-audio output and select hdmi as device and passthrough.

cheers

Yeah, can somebody update this page, cos it mentions you need to set the audio to "custom" with "hdmi:CARD=NVidia", and that didn't work for me. I just selected "internal stereo audio over HDMI" and "hdmi" and it's working fine.

Also got my remote (ASRock 330HT) working, installation of the lirc driver was a breeze, and XBMC picked it up immediately. Actually, I haven't even tested the remote that came with the ASRock yet as I don't have batteries. I just programmed my old harmony (and I mean old, like 4 years) and it worked. Just need to figure out some of the button mappings.

[harryzimm]

I've got the single core Revo (1600 or whaterver it is), so I used 32bit. I just download the ISO, then use the USB startup disk creator tool to make a Lucid USB stick. Then just installed as normal.

I did just ubgrade to Alsa 1.0.23. The script wasn't working for me earlier but I just got it to work, but it didn't fix my issue

Try

sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio

reboot.

cheers

[srv1973]

Yeah, can somebody update this page, cos it mentions you need to set the audio to "custom" with "hdmi:CARD=NVidia", and that didn't work for me. I just selected "internal stereo audio over HDMI" and "hdmi" and it's working fine.

So, actually it's not working. Seems that the 5.1 files I thought I was testing with weren't actually 5.1.

So last night I had perfect audio in 5.1 over HDMI to my Harman Kardon receiver with SMPlayer. Didn't notice any swapped center/left-rear channels either.

Today I applied the asound.conf and HDA-Intel.XXX file mentioned here, but apparently tested with the wrong video files, so it was just outputting in stereo over HDMI. So when tonight I started to show off my shiny setup to my wife, XBMC gave "failed to initialize audio" on a 5.1 track. She wanted to see the show anyways, so back to SMPlayer, but now that one has the swapped channels!

I moved the asound.conf and HDA-Intel file out of the way and rebooted, but that didn't help. Alsamixer on my system still doesn't give IEC958 channels, so nothing to unmute either.

Furthermore, even in normal Ubuntu Preferences->Sound I am now lacking the HDMI option. I moved the asound.conf and that HDA file back and rebooted, same result.

So now I can get correct stereo sound from SMPlayer and XBMC, wrong 5.1 sound sfrom SMPlayer, no 5.1 sound from XBMC, and my Ubuntu system sounds (like the logon tune) are gone as well

And the evening started so well... s'pose I'll wait for the weekend to try again (which starts on Friday here).

[blazini]

Try

Quote:
sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio
reboot.

cheers

That killed my sound and pavcontrol. I redid the 2 .conf files and got sound back then reinstalled pavcontrol, now I'm back where I started.

I'm still trying to figure out where the the profiles in pavcontrol come from and why I only get Digital stereo HDMI

[srv1973]

Try

sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio

reboot.

cheers

See my earlier rant about not being able to get this working.... Would purging pulseaudio and upgrading alsa from this ppa do any good?

[harryzimm]

Hi,

Here are the exact steps i took to enable 5.1 multi-channel audio via hdmi with xbmc. I use the latest pvr-testing branch
ppa from yavdr running on lucid mini. I suspect some of you are getting problems due to running a full desktop,
since i only run a minimal install i have no clue how to fix this.

1)
download the lucid mini image from here.

Download unetbootin to install via usb. Open unetbootin and select diskimage and browse to the mini.iso.Choose ur usb drive and hit ok.
Once unetbootin has copied the files to usb, go to the root of the usb drive and open syslinux.cfg with a text editor and replace

Code:

label unetbootindefault
menu label Default
kernel /ubnkern
append initrd=/ubninit priority=low vga=normal --

with

Code:

label unetbootindefault
menu label Default
kernel /ubnkern
append vga=normal initrd=initrd.gz -- quiet

2)
Boot from the usb stick and select default from the menu. Go through the install process choosing xbmc as user and password. When it asks what software to install choose openssh only.

3)After the reboot, you should have ubuntu installed and have a command line promt on the screen. You can continue the install via ssh if you know how.

login using the user pass from installation.

type:

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties pkg-config

Code:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:henningpingel/xbmc

Code:

sudo apt-get update

Code:

sudo apt-get install xbmc xinit x11-xserver-utils linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils binutils gcc upower udisks pm-utils policykit

Code:

sudo usermod -a -G audio xbmc

Code:

wget http://uk.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/256.25/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.25-pkg1.run

Code:

sudo chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.25-pkg1.run

Code:

sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.25-pkg1.run

If you get the nvidia.ko error, refer to here for the fix.

Code:

sudo nvidia-xconfig -s --no-logo --force-generate --output-xconfig=/etc/X11/xorg.conf

Code:

alsamixer

Unmute all iec and spdif (Hit m so they turn green)

Code:

sudo wget http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=f5f9654bb -O /etc/asound.conf

Code:

sudo wget http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=f2e38265 -O /usr/share/alsa/cards/HDA-Intel.conf

Code:

sudo reboot

Test if xbmc works

Code:

xinit xbmc

If it works

Code:

sudo apt-get install xbmc-live

Code:

sudo reboot

4)
In xbmc so to system-system-audio output. change output to digital, speaker config to 5.1 and audio output device and passthrough to hdmi.

Hopefully that will help some of you. This was done on a acer revo 3610.

cheers

[srv1973]

Hi,

Code:

alsamixer

Unmute all iec and spdif (Hit m so they turn green)

Wow, what a detailed description. Some people will be really happy with this one. You should include it in the wiki!

For me, I think the problem is the point above: alsamixer doesn't show any iec devices.

Tonight I'm going to apt-get purge pulseaudio and give this another shot. Who knows...

[EDIT]
Realized I have SSH access, so I went ahead with the purge and rebooted. Logged on to the system again, ran alsamixer. No IEC devices.

I did notice that I can select a different sound card with F6, so it now shows me the Nvidia MCP7A HDMI sound card. That one doesn't have IEC either, it has S/PDIF, S/PDIF Default PCM and S/PDIF 1 (all unmuted btw).

Code:

boekhold@xbmc:/proc/asound$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC889A Analog [ALC889A Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: ALC889A Digital [ALC889A 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
boekhold@xbmc:/proc/asound$ aplay -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
default:CARD=NVidia
    HDA NVidia, ALC889A Analog
    Default Audio Device
boekhold@xbmc:/proc/asound$

Now the aplay -L output looks a bit suspicious to me. It doesn't show any digital audio device. Also, I think I've seen aplay -L output on this forum for an ION system that did look different.

Just to put all the info in here, dmesg reports:

Code:

[   12.234430] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module  256.25  Tue May 18 20:38:41 PDT 2010

So that should be the correct driver version.

It also shows however:

Code:

[   13.890908] HDA Intel 0000:00:08.0: power state changed by ACPI to D0
[   13.891853] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LAZA] enabled at IRQ 23
[   13.891866] HDA Intel 0000:00:08.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LAZA] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23
[   13.891873] hda_intel: Disable MSI for Nvidia chipset
[   13.891967] HDA Intel 0000:00:08.0: setting latency timer to 64
[   14.062872] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 80x30
[   15.047225] hda_codec: ALC889A: BIOS auto-probing.
[   15.212196] input: HDA Digital PCBeep as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.0/input/input6

Not sure if that "Disable MSI for Nvidia chipset" does any harm...

Code:

> cat /proc/asound/version
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.21.

Hmmm, 1.0.21. But:

Code:

boekhold@xbmc:/proc/asound$ apt-cache show alsa-base | grep Version
Version: 1.0.22.1+dfsg-0ubuntu3

1.0.22.... is that just a mistake? Which driver version am I actually using?!?!

[The Chef]

Great writeup Harry.
When I get home I think I'll do you exact same steps and get Lucid mini. Does the mini form of Lucid have Firefox installed or anything or is it completely bare bones? I like having the ability to use the OS for some things.

Thanks

[harryzimm]

Thanks.

Its completely bare. That means no desktop no firefox, pretty much like xbmc-live it just boots straight to xbmc. There are guides on the forum to install and use firefox via the launcher plugin though.

cheers.

[Roelio]

What doest the line append vga=normal initrd=initrd.gz -- quiet in syslinux.cfg do?

[srv1973]

Thanks.

Its completely bare. That means no desktop no firefox, pretty much like xbmc-live it just boots straight to xbmc. There are guides on the forum to install and use firefox via the launcher plugin though.

cheers.

Completely bare, but essentially still the same basis as Lucid Desktop, right? So on the kernel/driver level I'd expect Lucid Mini and Lucid Desktop to be the same.

I just upgraded to ALSA 1.0.23 via the ubuntu-audio-dev ppa, and /proc/asound/version now shows the latest version. Also, aplay -L is now showing the hdmi device. However, I'm still not getting any sound, which is I suspect because the hdmi channels are muted.

alsamixer is still at version 1.0.22 and is NOT showing me any IEC958 devices to unmute

XBMC doesn't complain about "failed to initialize audio", so that's a good sign. I'm kinda hoping that this means all I need to do is to unmute the thing somehow.

[harryzimm]

What exact setup are you using. Do you have a reciever or is it tv audio you want.