[mythtv-users] Digital Audio and MythMusic...

[Michael T. Dean]

On 01/21/2008 08:11 PM, Noah Markon wrote:
>> Heh.  The ALSA configuration file at
>> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Configuring_Digital_Sound was
>> developed on and for a system that is nothing like Fedora Core (nor like
>> Ubuntu).  It should work, though, on any system that uses ALSA.
>> It's the sound card you're using (not the distro) that makes things
>> different.  Once you learn your sound card hardware intimately and learn
>> ALSA configuration far better than you care to learn, it's really rather
>> easy.  If you're not interested in doing that, I recommend the ALSA
>> config file from the wiki as a starting point--then you only need to
>> learn the sound card hardware (and the alsamixer view of that hardware).  :)
> Thanks I think I understand it a bit more, at least I hope I do. I
> think my problem comes when I try and find the name of my device via
> the aplay -L it looks completely different then everyone elses:
>   

Yeah.  That's the new format.  The wiki has the old.  The new is far 
less useful.

> Which  I guess is ok, because I should be able to specific the name
> when I try and play something. however when I do that using aplay (or
> mplayer), I get an error, which sort of stops me dead in my tracks.
>
> aplay -D iec958  english.au
> Playing Sparc Audio 'english.au' : Mu-Law, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
> aplay: set_params:900: Sample format non available
>
> I get that error no matter what I pass in for D. So now I'm back where
> I started.

Use the ALSA config (~/.asoundrc) in the wiki without modification (your 
card uses device 1 for digital) and:

aplay -D mixed-digital english.au

or

aplay -D digital english.au

should work once you set your mixer properly.  (Make sure you turn on 
IEC958 Output Switch.  There may be other mixer settings you need to 
switch, too.)

Once you get this working, you can use "ALSA:mixed-digital" or 
"ALSA:digital" in MythTV or modify the default device to use the mixed 
or unmixed digital output, as desired.

Mike