[alsa-devel] Trouble with sound over HDMI with Nvidia MCP7A HDMI

Sun Jan 3 05:07:11 CET 2010

I am having trouble getting sound over hdmi with my Nvidia MCP7A HDMI. The
strange thing is that everything works fine in a Live disc, but once I do a
fresh install of that Live disc I get no sound, even though my configuration
is exactly the same (as far as I can tell). I've checked the little things
like alsamixer volumes, aplay -l, etc etc. Everything looks good to me. I
can reproduce on multiple TVs so its not the receiver. Video drivers are the
same in both live version and installed. aplay -l detects my device.
sound/pci/hda/patch_nvhdmi.c already has my correct vendor id in it. Perhaps
the following info can help figure out what my installed environment is
lacking. I've been at it for days now and I'm stumped! Any ideas?

*Live Disc Info*

XMBC Live 9.11 (basically a optimized version of Karmic configured to start
XBMC, or Xbox Media Center, see http://www.xbmc.org for more info)
NOTE: My problem is not specific to the XBMC program. Things like aplay and
speaker-test don't work either.

*Hardware*

Acer Aspire Revo R1600

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103228&Tpk=AR1600

*XBMC Live installed to hard disk via Ubuntu installer*

(This setup gives me no sound over HDMI)

(This is a fresh install. No additional changes were made)

alsa-info.sh

http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=ab7cef7c7233f8c42756d36e362df684b9147d38

xbmc at XBMCLive:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC662 rev1 Analog [ALC662 rev1
Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

xbmc at XBMCLive:~$ aplay -L
default:CARD=NVidia
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, NVIDIA HDMI
    HDMI Audio Output
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)

*
### speaker-test executes but NO SOUND over hdmi*. *I've also tried other
devices like -D hdmi:0 -D hw:0,3 -D hdmi -D plug:hdmi, etc, etc*

xbmc at XBMCLive:~$ speaker-test -D plughw:0,3 -c2

speaker-test 1.0.20

Playback device is plughw:0,3
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 64 to 16384
Period size range from 32 to 8192
Using max buffer size 16384
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 4096
was set buffer_size = 16384
 0 - Front Left
 1 - Front Right
Time per period = 5.637709
 0 - Front Left

xbmc at XBMCLive:~$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version
NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module 190.53 Tue Dec 8 18:51:41 PST
2009
GCC version: gcc version 4.4.1 (Ubuntu 4.4.1-4ubuntu8)

*
XMBC Live Disc
*

**
(This setup gives me audio over hdmi perfectly)

(This is running as a Live disc, ie not installed)

**
alsa-info.sh

http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=c95bebdc433f15147fb0be415be4e61e4d0b72ad [
^<http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=c95bebdc433f15147fb0be415be4e61e4d0b72ad>
]

xbmc at XBMCLive:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC662 rev1 Analog [ALC662 rev1
Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

xbmc at XBMCLive:~$ aplay -L
default:CARD=NVidia
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, NVIDIA HDMI
    HDMI Audio Output
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)

###* speaker-test plays audio over hdmi perfectly. other programs play audio
over hdmi.*

xbmc at XBMCLive:~$ speaker-test -D plughw:0,3 -c2

speaker-test 1.0.20

Playback device is plughw:0,3
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 64 to 16384
Period size range from 32 to 8192
Using max buffer size 16384
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 4096
was set buffer_size = 16384
 0 - Front Left
 1 - Front Right
Time per period = 5.638693

xbmc at XBMCLive:~$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version
NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module 190.53 Tue Dec 8 18:51:41 PST
2009
GCC version: gcc version 4.4.1 (Ubuntu 4.4.1-4ubuntu8)

*Additional Information

*
I had an idea to run a diff on the two alsa-info.sh outputs of my installed
and live version. (non-working and working, see above) I figured that might
give me a clue on what I was missing. Most things should be identical with a
few exceptions like timestamps, etc.

MacBook-Austin:Desktop Austin$ diff -crB alsa-info_installed.txt
alsa-info_live.txt > alsa-infodiff.diff

alsa-info_installed.txt: http://pastebin.com/f63afa045 (non-working, same as
above)

alsa-info_live.txt: http://pastebin.com/f7b47d46d (working, same as above)

alsa-infodiff.diff: http://pastebin.com/f79cf9c15

Only a few things caught my attention. At first I thought I had my playback
volumes muted (line 525,532) according to the diff. But then I realized that
was just for the mic, so that shouldn't matter. The only other thing that I
saw was that my Amp-Out vals differed (line 123, 129). Perhaps, a more
trained eye will have better luck.

Bug has also been reported here:
https://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/alsa-bug/view.php?id=4865