[mythtv-users] MythTV sound through SPDIF

[Michael T. Dean]

On 06/04/2007 01:20 PM, Ludmil Miltchev wrote:
> My MythTV used to work flawlessly with a stereo analog sound (2ch). I 
> decided to switch to SPDIF and now when I try to watch TV, DVDs or 
> listen to music (using the Internal player) I don't get any sound.
> However, I can watch videos (using MPlayer) without any problem.
>
> ===================================================================================
>
> I tried fixing the problem, using the following articles:
>
> - Configuring Digital Sound with AC3 and SPDIF 
> <http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Configuring_Digital_Sound_with_AC3_and_SPDIF>
>   

Which specifically says:
-----
The MythTV WIKI Configuring Digital Sound (
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Configuring_Digital_Sound ) page
provides a good starting point for configuring ALSA. However, due to the
pre-installation nature of Fedora Core 5 and the ALSA suite, a fair
chunk of the WIKI document does not apply and a lot of the information
gets lost in the mix.
-----
Thereby telling many users (probably you included since you didn't
mention reading that page) not to read the Configuring Digital Sound
page.  While the Configuring Digital Sound page is by no means correct,
it does provide an ALSA configuration file that will work with just
about any card and that is required in certain circumstances for certain
types of sound card (yours included).

Unfortunately, people found it easier to write about why it's not needed
than to understand what it's doing and why it is needed in certain
situations.  And, since every single "it's not needed" comment is really
a "it's not needed for my specific version of ALSA on my specific distro
using my specific MythTV configuration with my specific sound card and
with my specific TV sources, videos, and/or music files," every single
"it's not needed" comment is wrong (although I'm not saying it's not
possible for it to work without the configuration).

Saying, "It's not needed," is simply saying, "The defaults for my card
just happened to work for me in the limited number of cases I've tried."

Try http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Configuring_Digital_Sound .

HTH,
Mike