[mythtv-users] AC3 and/or S/PDIF (again)

[Steve Adeff]

On Tuesday 24 January 2006 01:52, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 01/23/2006 11:01 PM, Mario Limonciello wrote:
> >>> A quick question if I may. Am I right in thinking that if I buy a new
> >>> sound-card with 6 analogue channels on the output it will drive my 5.1
> >>> amp (it has 6 channel input) for surround sound.
> >>
> >> Yes (assuming you mean by 6-channel input that you have at least 6 RCA
> >> connectors or 3 headphone connectors for input).
> >>
> >> Note, though, that many cards use line in for surround output in
> >> surround modes, so if you've got a software encoder that requires a
> >> sound card for audio, you may have to keep your on-board card enabled as
> >> well for sound capture.
> >>
> >>> i.e. I guess I am asking does myth decode the 5.1 happily from DVDs
> >>> and from DVB-T broadcasts?
> >>
> >> Yep.  It's been doing this for a long time--just disable AC-3 pass
> >> through.  Mark Spieth recently created a patch to support timestretch
> >> with multi-channel streams.  He did the analog patch in no time, but
> >> it's the re-encoding to AC-3 that's taking some time.  I don't think the
> >> patch has been put in SVN, yet, though, so it may not make it into 0.19.
> >
> > On this exact note - I was having trouble just today with a recent SVN
> > release attempting to do 5.1 native from myth the analogue route.
> >
> > I have a HD5000 that records a few streams with 5.1.  I also have xine
> > setup to use the analogue 5.1 outputs to drive my receiver for dvds.
> > Now in myth, when I change from ALSA:default to ALSA:surround51 (which I
> > use for xine), I get no audio in myth.  If I try to force it to the
> > exact pcm available for my card, ALSA:hw:0,3 I also get no audio.  Is
> > there something else I'm missing here?
> >
> > Here is relavent info from my mythfrontend console output:
> > 2006-01-23 21:59:58.595 Opening audio device 'hw:0,3'.
> > 2006-01-23 21:59:58.637 Access type not available: Invalid argument
> > 2006-01-23 21:59:58.637 Unable to set ALSA parameters
> > 2006-01-23 21:59:58.637 NVP: Disabling Audio, reason is: Unable to set
> > ALSA parameters
>
> What are you using for an ALSA conf (~/.asoundrc or /etc/asound.conf)?
>
> Mike

and have you tried setting the audio output device to "ALSA"?

-- 
Steve