[mythtv-users] alsa works with mplayer, but now with mythtv

[myth at fsck.ch]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2003 at 10:31:18PM -0500, Peter Lee wrote:
> [Sorry about the change in subject line.  I goofed on my previous reply and
> am trying to fix it now.]
> 
> On Dec 16, 2003, a 00:07:10, Jarod C. Wilson wrote:
> > 
> > On Dec 15, 2003, at 04:52, Peter Lee wrote:
> > 
> >> Hmm...I don't recall a frontend option like that, but I'll check that
> >> this
> >> evening when I get home.  And yes, I did enable the spdif output, using
> >> gnome-alsamixer.  The thing is, I am failing to get output from either
> >> the
> >> headphone line-out or the spdif-out on the soundblaster (except when I
> >> use
> >> mplayer)...
> > 
> > Is your audio output device in mythfrontend set correctly? (i.e., to
> > /dev/dsp or whatever dsp is associated with that card?). If you still
> > have the config for the first card in your system, the second card is
> > probably using /dev/dsp1 (/dev/dsp links to /dev/dsp0, I believe),
> > which you need to tell MythTV to use as its audio out device.
> > 
> 
> I just checked:  I have /dev/dsp and /dev/dsp1.  I don't have a /dev/dsp0.
> In mythfrontend setup, the audio is set to /dev/dsp.  Just for kicks, I
> tried switching it to /dev/dsp1.  Still no sound out of the SBLive.
> HOWEVER: After this little experiment, I went back into mythfrontend setup
> to switch the audio back to /dev/dsp.  But when I did this, I saw that it
> was already set to /dev/dsp.  In other words, my attempt to change to
> /dev/dsp1 didn't "stick"!
> 
> I wonder if this is a clue?...
> 
> I am really really happy with everything other than this.  I have been
> contemplating upgrading to 0.13, but somehow it seems wrong to do the
> upgrade without first understanding what is going wrong here.

what helped for me was to change the setting manually in the mysql db.
in the settings table, look for something named 'AudioOutputDevice' and
value '/dev/dsp' (I don't recall the exact names right now) and set it
to 'Alsa:default' (or maybe 'Alsa:Default', sorry for not remembering it
clearly).

Though, I think you will still need the oss compatibility modules from
alsa around. Sound stopped working when I removed them. But then again,
that could be just a wrong mixer setting, which would be easy to fix. I
don't know too much about alsa/oss anyway, so I can't tell.

hope that helps, t.