I've been trying to set up KnoppMyth/MythTV to use spdif for audio output, read through the HOWTOs without any success. The audio card is an onboard ATI IXP 150.

In a nutshell what I have done:

- used aplay -l and aplay -L to ensure the device is there (IEC958 found as card 0, device 1) and that I should be able to refer to it using ALSA:iec958 or ALSA:spdif

- unmuted IEC958 using alsamixer and done alsactl store (don't know if latter necessary)

Mplayer works fine with regular analog output (ALSA:default) but not with ALSA:spdif. The digital out does not even show the red light even when playing with ALSA:spdif. Should it be lit even when not playing or only when playing?

Apologies for the monologue, but turns out at that depending on the motherboard (mines a Shuttle), the ATI IXP module (snd-atiixp) may need to be modprobed with the parameter spdif_aclink=0 (1 by default). As it turns out, my spdif started to work immediately after doing this.

I'm curious what functionality you are able to get using spdif out.

Are you able to get both digital out and analog out from your sound card?

I would want both out at the same time, or at least be able to switch it on the fly. This way I could watch TV normally with my receiver turned off, or have my receiver turned on for shows with good digital content.

mike

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KnoppMyth R5B7
Asus P4P800-VM
P4 2.4 Ghz - 1GB RAM
PVR-150 - HD-5000
Geforce FX 5200

I was thinking of setting the default MythTV audio output to analog out and connect it to my TV and then in the Music settings set spdif as the output which would be connected to my receiver.

This way music would be played through my receiver and everything else (ie. TV) through my TV. Will have to see how this works out.