Enable audio through HDMI on GT240

[zim2dive]

Originally Posted by paoleary

(In case you couldn't tell, I'm down to the shotgun approach here.)

I did have a problem last night with an incorrect ~/.asoundrc which conflicted with the (correct) settings in /etc/asound.conf, preventing snes9x-gtk from outputting audio. I'm using the simple two-line asound.conf on the linked wiki page which sets the default and iec958 devices to the HDMI output of the NVidia card.

Oh, I think I passed the shotgun approach ages ago... I call it the spaghetti approach.. just throw everything against the wall and pray that something.. anything sticks (find me any other OS where half the sound sources are working, but the other half do not....)

I think part of my problem may be that I have 4 reported HDMI devices for card 1 (1,3 1,7 1,8 1,9)... so perhaps some sources are confused by just saying HDMI.. 1,7 works for speaker-test and for some of my audio sources... but not the others...

the xbmc page references the multiple reported devices as a potential problem.. BUT it then references another document suggesting it would shed some light on how to prune them down to just the 1 you'd want... but I wasn't able to find any more spaghetti to throw...

[paoleary]

Originally Posted by zim2dive

the xbmc page references the multiple reported devices as a potential problem.. BUT it then references another document suggesting it would shed some light on how to prune them down to just the 1 you'd want... but I wasn't able to find any more spaghetti to throw...

If you've got the four devices listed, you can knock that down to a single one with the probe_mask setting in /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf as described on the XBMC wiki. (I pretty much wrote it, collecting the knowledge from the XBMC forum thread before it got wiped, so if it's unclear somewhere, my apologies--edits/suggestions are appreciated.)

[zim2dive]

Originally Posted by paoleary

If you've got the four devices listed, you can knock that down to a single one with the probe_mask setting in /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf as described on the XBMC wiki. (I pretty much wrote it, collecting the knowledge from the XBMC forum thread before it got wiped, so if it's unclear somewhere, my apologies--edits/suggestions are appreciated.)

LOL, apologies are not required... you have my thanks for getting me much further than I would have otherwise. My take on things was that I had a card not yet covered by the possible cases... Ihad so many things break in my 9.10 to 10.04 upgrade that this is just a side experiment for now.

I've tried 5 possible modprobe settings now...

- nothing
- enable_msi=0 probe_mask=0xffff,0xfff2
- enable_msi=0

these give me the 4 copies at device 1 (3,7,8,9)

- options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=0 index=-2
- options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=0 index=1

These 2 give me the same 4 options but listed as being card 0.. .and the sound pref panel won't come up.. it says "waiting for sound system to start" (or something like that)

For asound.conf I am still using

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 1
device 7
}

I tried reading your link to http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kern...robing_problem to remove the duplicate nvidia entries, but I'm in over my head at this point, and/or just blind. (this was the page I was referring to where I had hoped to find more spaghetti to throw )

thanks!

[zim2dive]

Made _some_ progress.

In XBMC, I was able to set a "custom" audio output device, as "plughw:1,7", exit, relaunch XBMC and I have sound now.

Working: mplayer, xbmc, flash
not working : ryhthmbox, system sounds

I launched gstreamer-properites and set its audio output to my 2nd HDMI entry (out of 4) (shows up as 1,7 in the shaded out comments), but that didn't seem to help rhythmbox.

[paoleary]

Oh, man, you went to 10.4...you're a better man than I. The latest kernel update on 9.10 broke my audio. I just backed out the change (technically, set the default boot option to "2" instead of "0" in /etc/grub/menu.lst) rather than try to crawl through that mess.

I'd drop the asound.conf you have in favor of the one in the wiki. It avoids explicitly numbering devices/codecs, so it should be more reliable, and will make the HDMI out ALSA:default (useful with applications that don't let you set a specific ALSA device, like snes9x-gtk ).

I'm not sure about the index=yy options for modprobe; those were suggested by someone else but I haven't used them since the NVidia device comes up on the same card # consistently on my box (and actually, I've now disabled the onboard for Ultimate Consistency).

I've never checked if system sounds worked, since if they did, I'd want them to be silent as the machine spends the vast majority of its time in either mythfrontend or snes9x-gtk, and I wouldn't want to hear them anyways.

[zim2dive]

Originally Posted by paoleary

I'd drop the asound.conf you have in favor of the one in the wiki. It avoids explicitly numbering devices/codecs, so it should be more reliable, and will make the HDMI out ALSA:default (useful with applications that don't let you set a specific ALSA device, like snes9x-gtk ).

There's the thing tho... that asoundrc doesn't work for me (I lose my sound from Flash).. my guess is b/c there are 4 HDMI options for it to pick and its picking the wrong one? I have to find a way to make sure it picks 1,7 as HDMI, not 1,3 (or 1,8, 1,9)

[paoleary]

Originally Posted by zim2dive

...my guess is b/c there are 4 HDMI options for it to pick and its picking the wrong one?

Then it seems like we need to get the probe_mask option figured out. AFAIK, the 210 is the only card which works without it, and it does mean that addressing ALSA:hdmi doesn't work. But you said that 0xfff2 doesn't work for you? Very odd, as that should force snd_hda_intel to not probe the other codec slots on the chip (the "phantom" devices that muddy things up).

[zim2dive]

Originally Posted by paoleary

Then it seems like we need to get the probe_mask option figured out. AFAIK, the 210 is the only card which works without it, and it does mean that addressing ALSA:hdmi doesn't work. But you said that 0xfff2 doesn't work for you? Very odd, as that should force snd_hda_intel to not probe the other codec slots on the chip (the "phantom" devices that muddy things up).

I am pretty sure (but willing to re-check) that I got the same 4 HDMI devices, each time.

If there is a way to change this, and not reboot (??) I can check remotely (from work) and report back quickly.. else I can check tonite.

EDIT: might be making some progress with editing sound.conf and using "/etc/init.d/alsasound restart".. but will hve to wait until home tonite to verify. Will report back.

[zim2dive]

Originally Posted by zim2dive

Made _some_ progress.

In XBMC, I was able to set a "custom" audio output device, as "plughw:1,7", exit, relaunch XBMC and I have sound now.

Working: mplayer, xbmc, flash
not working : ryhthmbox, system sounds

I launched gstreamer-properites and set its audio output to my 2nd HDMI entry (out of 4) (shows up as 1,7 in the shaded out comments), but that didn't seem to help rhythmbox.

Ok, moving sideways

>more /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf 
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=0 probe_mask=0xffff,0xfff2

at this point, I have working sound from 1,3... and I have sound from Rhythmbox.. the Sound preference panel refuses to launch. So does the Pulseaudio sound panel, they used to launch. I'm using

pcm.!default hdmi:NVidia
pcm:iec958 hdmi:NVidia

EDIT: Flash sound ok after all.
EDIT2: I got Sound panel and Pulseaudio volume working. .I had to edit /etc/pulse/default.pa and comment out the line

load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:1,3

Now I can launch the panel and get system sounds out HDMI. Need to go back and test everything else (will be tomorrow).

Working: *maybe* everything

[paoleary]

Originally Posted by zim2dive

Working: *maybe* everything

*fingers crossed*

[zim2dive]

Originally Posted by paoleary

*fingers crossed*

thanks for sticking with me on this I had the wrong formatting in my modprobe lines.. that only became obvious when I restarted alsa from the command line, and thus saw the error messages (restart attempt #1 would fail with errors, but restart attempt #2 would appear to succeed with warnings). Once I got that fixed, the modprobe lines did give me different results (1 vs 4 HDMI entries).

Had to re-un-mute the HDMI connection in alsamixer, and then all started to work.

And then that crazy Pulseaudio bug, where the panels refused to launch b/c they were pointing at a sound device (1,7) that no longer existed (really?? they never considered that in the programming and put in a graceful way to handle it???? argh).

Will put it thru the full paces tonite.

[larophel]

I have been able to use audio through HDMI on my GT230M using the latest ALSA drivers, yay!

I use the the following command to play movies:

mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=1.7

Have any of you experienced mplayer skipping frames when using audio through HDMI?