[alsa-devel] [PATCH 0/30] ALSA: HDA VIA: patch series

[Robert Hancock]

On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 11:29 PM, Takashi Iwai <tiwai at suse.de> wrote:
> At Sun, 11 Oct 2009 13:51:28 -0600,
> Robert Hancock wrote:
>>
>> On 10/11/2009 01:27 PM, Takashi Iwai wrote:
>> > At Sun, 11 Oct 2009 10:56:48 -0600,
>> > Robert Hancock wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 10:18 AM, Takashi Iwai<tiwai at suse.de>  wrote:
>> >>> At Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:07:09 +0800,
>> >>> Logan Li wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Following patch series mainly includes:
>> >>>>   - support VT1718S, VT2002P, VT1812S, VT1716S, ...
>> >>>>   - support smart 5.1
>> >>>>   - add jack detection for VT1708
>> >>>>   - power saving functions
>> >>>
>> >>> Thanks for the patches.  They are all well formatted now.
>> >>>
>> >>> I applied your patches except for 17,
>> >>>         ALSA: HDA VIA: Add 2nd S/PDIF out for VT1708S and VT1702
>> >>> as Robert reported a regression.
>> >>>
>> >>> This is likely because of the behavior change by this patch.  Now
>> >>> the second SPDIF has to be specified manually with the explicit
>> >>> substream number.  This itself is fine, but I see the problem with
>> >>> pulseaudio, for example.  There is no good way to specify this substream
>> >>> automatically for PA with some symbols like "spdif" or "hdmi".
>> >>>
>> >>> This is basically a problem of the current ALSA core and HD-audio core
>> >>> implementation.  So, we should solve all together.
>> >>
>> >> Actually, the latest posted version didn't have the mixer problem I
>> >> had before (I haven't looked in detail at what was different). But I
>> >> agree using a different substream for a different output isn't ideal
>> >> since there's no way for software to detect that this is the case. Can
>> >> it be a separate PCM like hw:0,2 or something?
>> >
>> > It would work like hw:0,1,1.  But, this is exactly what I mentioned in
>> > the above.  The secondary SPDIF isn't specified as an intuitively
>> > selectable PCM device.
>>
>> Well, if it was its own subdevice like hw:0,2 it would have some hope of
>> being detected by HAL, PulseAudio, etc. If it's just a substream then I
>> don't think that software can actually tell it's a separate output and
>> not just a HW mixing-type stream, etc.
>
> Right, that's the missing information.
>
>> >> Hopefully VIA will also look into the SPDIF no-output problem I have
>> >> with VT1828S..
>> >
>> > What is the problem, specifically?
>>
>> With the latest patch I do get the optical output lighting up and the
>> receiver detects a PCM signal, but it seems to be just silence coming
>> through. (In previous iterations the SPDIF digital converter wasn't
>> being enabled automatically so it didn't get even that far.)
>
> You can fiddle with hda-verb to issue digital-converter verbs.
> Possibly you need to flip the digital-enable bit to send the values...

Well, I think I tried all combinations of the flags on the digital
converter in hda_analyzer without any luck. I'm assuming it's
something else (presumably codec-specific) that hda_analyzer doesn't
know about..