[mythtv-users] adding HDMI audio to analog audio setup

[Jerome Yuzyk]

On Saturday, December 05, 2015 05:47:35 PM Jerome Yuzyk wrote:
> Now that I have a 2nd monitor working for my kitchen, I'd like to use its built-in speakers. I have Googled myself into confusion though, between ALSA and PulseAudio and their respective configuration files.
> 
> 
> Here's my setup:
> 
> MythTV 0.27.4 on Fedora 22, nVidia GT520 video with VGA/DVI/HDMI. Onboard Intel analog audio out, split to Monitor1 and a simple stereo receiver. Monitor1 is driven by DVI because that's the only non-VGA cable I had and it works fine for video, with an alog input for audio.
> 
> I need to use analog out as the primary output because my old stereo only does analog.
> 
> Monitor2 is driven by a 25-foot HDMI cable. It also has an analog input but I figure I shouldn't have to run another line because HDMI does audio.
> 
> MythFrontend is using ALSA:Pulse because that's what worked when I set it up.
> 
> I use Fluxbox so I have no Gnome or KDE tools, but I do have some pulseaudio utilities like pavucontrol and pacmd. paprefs wanted to install a pile of dependencies that I didn't want to do.
> 
> [mythtv at tv ~]$ aplay -l
> **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
> card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC888 Analog [ALC888 Analog]
>   Subdevices: 0/1
>   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
>   Subdevices: 1/1
>   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
>   Subdevices: 1/1
>   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> 
> [mythtv at tv ~]$ pacmd list-sinks  | grep -e 'name:'  -e 'alsa.device ' -e 'alsa.subdevice '
> 
>         name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo>
>                 alsa.subdevice = "0"
>                 alsa.device = "0"
>         name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_01_00.1.hdmi-stereo-extra1>
>                 alsa.subdevice = "0"
>                 alsa.device = "7"

OK, I dove in and solved it, based on

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio/Examples#Simultaneous_HDMI_and_analog_output

My case was the opposite though - I needed to add HDMI to my analog default.

Contrary to the link, I put this at the bottom of /etc/pulse/default.pa:

    load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:1,3
    load-module module-combine-sink sink_name=combined
    set-default-sink combined

hw:1,3 is [HDMI 0] from my aplay -l results.

I restarted PulseAudio with 

    mythtv> pulseaudio --kill && pulseaudio -start

Then I ran pavucontrol and it showed the new sink. In the Configuration tab I set Built-in Audio to "Analog Stereo Duplex".

Over in MythFrontend Setup->Audio I selected ALSA:default.

Finally I stopped in at alsamixer to set the Master volume for the onboard analog and that was it. Recordings and music are played on both screens and my stereo.


To answer an earlier question about my Google-Fu: Yes it's very good. But, the combination of ALSA, PulseAudio, OSes, and audio configurations makes for a lot of open tabs in different browser windows. Especially when I'm reading first before tinkering and loathe to risk my football weekend by disturbing some force in the MythTV environment. There are quite a few ways to do what I had to do, apparently, even within one of the players in the whole setup.

And now here's another Google hit to help or confuse someone. :)


-- 
A little of Jerome's MythTV World: http://mythtv.bss.ab.ca
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20151207/68f46e92/attachment.html>