Anyone install the proprietary nvidia drivers on R5C7 or something recent.

I am trying to get AC3 passthrough working on a nf2 motherboard. I am willing to try nvsound, if I was sure that it would provide this feature when installed correctly. However, I can't tell from the posts and my internet search whether this is supported by nvsound.

Note, I am currently using the ALSA drivers to stereo SPDIF out. If the nvsound drivers don't provide anything more than stereo, it's not worth the effort.

The previous posts on this topic are all year old or more.

Thanks!

What motherboard? Which soundchips? What version of ALSA drivers?

With my Asus board and the Analog Devices 1986a sound chip, you need at least ALSA 1.0.11 to get the sound working correctly.
Try getting your ALSA drivers updated first, then try other tweaks.
see this post for a quick ALSA update script:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10074

If the ALSA update doens't help, you may also need to add a config file to enable correct passthrough.
see this post for that topic:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8254

Eric

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KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner

Hey thanks for the reply. Let me elaborate on my initial question. I really meant to ask a specific question; whether any others were still using the OSS driver with the latest kernel. Because of the chipset I’m using, I believe it is the only way to get SPDIF output working for AC3.

Let me give you a little background.

My configuration:

Chaintech 7NIF4 motherboard (NVIDIA nForce2 IGP + MCPS)
[Onboard Video and Audio, SPDIF output]
2 x PVR 250
1 x Air2PC HD-5000
512 MB Memory
2x WD 250 GB PIDE Harddrives (LVM configuration)

I’ve been running R5A26 on this configuration for nearly a year. I decided to upgrade to R5C7 last week when I added the HD-5000 card. With a few tweaks, everything is working as before with R5A26.

One persistent shortcoming I encounter is that I have not been able to get the SPDIF audio work for AC3 pass through. I have tried many things with some limited success.

With the R5C7 configuration, I have updated ALSA to the lastest stable release 1.0.12 (no rc). With ALSA 1.0.12, I was able to enable stereo SPDIF output.

Here is the output /proc/asound/pcm

00-02: Intel ICH - IEC958 : NVidia CK8 - IEC958 : playback 1
00-01: Intel ICH - MIC ADC : NVidia CK8 - MIC ADC : capture 1
00-00: Intel ICH : NVidia CK8 : playback 1 : capture 1

One thing I should point out, I have learned that the open source driver, snd_intel8x0, for NF2 chipset was reversed engineered. The specs were never supplied by nvidia. As such, it has some annoying quirks. In order enable Stereo SPDIF with ALSA, I had to select some counter-intuitive alsamixer settings. I use the following settings:

IE598: On
IE598 Playback: 0
IE598 Playback Source: PCM

With these settings, I am able to get sound out of device 0,0. For example, the following mplayer command works:

mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=0.0 song.mp3

but the following command

mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=0.2 song.mp3

does not work. No alsamixer settings will let me get device 0,2 working. Device 0,2 is the device that digital audio should be enable through. I’ve tried many combinations. I’ve used the feedback from receiver “PCM” indicator to help judge whether any of these settings were successful.

I’ve learned from google searches that many others are having a similar problem with the ALSA nf2 drivers. As a result, I think the only way to get digital output working correctly is to go back to the nvidia supplied "nvsound" driver that works with OSS rather than ALSA. I have never tried the nvidia driver.

So, I was wondering if anyone else was still using the OSS with knoppmyth. Is there was any hope to getting an OSS configuration working with the current linux kernal at R5C7 is using. Am I wasting my time trying to go back to OSS? Will I have to recompile to kernal to get running?

Thanks

Mark

Just a brief update. Installing nvsound from the nvidia did the trick for digital audio output! If anyone has an interest in this set-up, I'll post my steps. It great to finally get this working!