Once again I am trapped.

My hardware:
A7N266 nforce chipset
512 MB
Gainward Geforce 4200
WD 120G hard drive
HP DVD writer 300i

I am unable to enable the mic as output for my rear speakers or the SPDIF for audio. I have reinstalled nvidia's drivers from their site, alsa by typing 'apt-get install alsa-source', and enabling several combinations of bars from the alsamixer.

I have also added a file called asound.conf to /etc per instructions found here. I also edited the file per instructions (and other users comments) from here. The file looks like this:



All that I have done does not seem to effect the sound in any way.

What am I missing?

In Windows XP I could play an mp3 and get surround sound encoding to my music receiver with spdif (just a cool blue light shines and sound is heard out of all four speakers, whether this is true Dolby I could care less). I could also (at the same time) get music out of all four speakers. This was convenient to play music in two seperate rooms. Can I expect the same or similar results once this is working?

I apologize if this question is reduntant or simple. I was unable to find the answers elsewhere and through searching this site. I appreciate your help.

Are you sure it's card 0 ?

what does /proc/asound show ?

Rob

It has:

NForce
card0
dev
devices
modules
oss
pcm
seq
timers
version

what is the output of the following comands ?

"cat cards"
"cat devices"
"cat modules"
"cat pcm"


Rob

cat cards:
0 [NForce ]: ICH - NVidia NForce
NVidia NForce at 0xe4800000, irq 11

cat devices:
0: [0- 0]: ctl
16: [0- 0]: digital audio playback
24: [0- 0]: digital audio capture
33: : timer

cat modules:
0 snd-intel8x0

cat pcm:
00-00: Intel ICH : NVidia NForce : playback 1 : capture 1

Did I correctly setup the asound.conf file?

I get the impression it isn't even seeing that file. I looked on MythTV's archive list and people who have incorrectly set this file up would at least have gotten an error. I haven't seen any error messages or change in sound coming out of the system. It would be nice to at least get an error message.

Users have also reported a setting called, "Audio Output device". Where one might change the output to, "ALSA:mixed-digital." Where can I find this setting?

I have to say I am still rather lost.

update:
I added gnome-alsamixer (apt-get install gnome-alsamixer). I also goofed on the asound.conf file, and when attempting to open alsamixer it complained that I had an outdated asound file. I changed it back to what I had and it worked again. This would indicate that alsamixer sees the file. Is there something I need to do with MythTV to get this working?

I was able to finally get four speakers working. I simply installed v3 of KnoppMyth and XMMS. I was unable to get anything working until I selected nforce in xmms and enabled some scroll bars in gnome-alsamixer. I didn't even put in the asound.conf file in /etc yet.

Still working on spdif. Not quite sure how to approach this.

Now I am side-tracked; the mythtv user no longer autologs in. hmmmm.
[update - I used 'gdmsetup' to re-enable the mythtv user auto-login. The name wasn't displayed, so I typed it in. That worked. Strange though.]

I am still stuck on this and would like some advice.

SPDIF out should be acheived by modifying some if the IEC598 (aka spdif) controls or check boxes. But I cannot get this working. I checked any combination of these boxes in gnome-alsamixer and nothing happens.

Is there any order that I need to compile the alsa drivers/utils/lib and install gnome-alsamixer? Is there anything I need to do to the kernel (recompile)? nForce driver compile? Do anyof these even need to be compiled?

I also would like to apologize. The answer seems like it is right in front of me. I am just not seeing it. Also, after reading this and other posts I realized that this thread is beyond the scope of Installation. Moderators; feel free to relocate this to the appropriate area.

ok well, I managed to get spdif working. Consider this resolved. I have other related issues but I will post those in another thread.

To get spdif working I used the R4v3 of KnoppMyth. I compiled the alsa drivers/lib/utils according to the directions on Alsa's web site. I even followed the instructions for previous versions

I did an apt-get install gnome-alsamixer and apt-get install xmms. This helped testing.

Finally, I adjusted the gnome-alsamixer and after testing saved the settings with '/usr/sbin/alsactl store' ('/usr/sbin/alsactl restore' to restore).

It is possible going over the directions the first time I may have missed something (ok, highly probable ). I think the problem may have been with the ./snddevices
or 'chmod a+rw /dev/dsp /dev/mixer /dev/sequencer /dev/midi'. For some reason both of those commands helped when intermittant problems came up later after installing other programs.

I appreciate your patience with listening to my banter.