SPDIF Not Working after Motherboard Upgrade

[damien_d]

Hello all,

I have recently upgraded my motherboard and CPU on my media centre from an AMD 3800/Gigabyte GA-MA770_D3 to a Phenom 810/Asus M4N78 Pro.

I also took the liberty to change the main hard disk, because recording Wimbledon every night chews up the space a little

So far, I have fixed fstab, grub, and networking (udev problem), but as of yet, I have not yet gotten the S/PDIF (Optical Audio) working on the new motherboard.

I have tried enabling IEC958 in alsamixer, which worked nicely for my old mobo, but no luck with this one.

I should also mention that I am using the S/PDIF on the back panel and I am NOT using HDMI (I actually have a Nvidia 7300 plugged in for component video)

Hopefully this will help:

damien@mediabox:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: VT1708S Analog [VT1708S Analog]
  Subdevices: 2/2
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

damien@mediabox:~$ lsmod | grep snd
snd_hda_intel         557492  3 
snd_pcm_oss            52352  0 
snd_mixer_oss          24960  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                99336  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_dummy          11524  0 
snd_seq_oss            41984  0 
snd_seq_midi           15744  0 
snd_rawmidi            33920  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_midi_event     16512  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq                66272  6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_timer              34064  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device         16276  5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
snd                    78792  15 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
soundcore              16800  1 snd
snd_page_alloc         18704  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm

damien@mediabox:~$ lspci
00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Memory Controller (rev a2)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] LPC Bridge (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] SMBus (rev a1)
00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:01.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Co-Processor (rev a2)
00:01.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a1)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a1)
00:04.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a1)
00:04.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a1)
00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] IDE (rev a1)
00:07.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] High Definition Audio (rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Bridge (rev a1)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] SATA Controller (non-AHCI mode) (rev a2)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Ethernet (rev a2)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:13.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Bridge (rev a1)
00:14.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Bridge (rev a1)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] HyperTransport Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Miscellaneous Control
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Link Control
01:05.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder (rev 05)
01:05.2 Multimedia controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [MPEG Port] (rev 05)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce 7300 GS] (rev a1)

Could there be some left-over configuration from the old mobo that's polluting the setup?

-- Damien

[damien_d]

Since the original post, I have attempted to upgrade ALSA via the script posted at: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6589810

Latest Stable:
--------------

Firstly, I upgraded to the latest stable (1.0.20 I believe it was), and the to the latest snapshot with the --snap option to the script.

Upon doing so, there are now extra SPDIF devices available:

damien@mediabox:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: VT1708S Analog [VT1708S Analog]
  Subdevices: 2/2
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: VT1708S Digital [VT1708S Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

That is, the "VT1708S Digital" is new with the updated driver.

Under 1.0.20, none of the IEC958 options enabled the optical output (there were actually four available).

Snapshot:
---------

Under the latest snapshot as of 8th July 2009:

There are now a couple of different IEC958 options in alsamixer:
* IEC958
* IEC958 Default PCM
* IEC958 1

The first option enables optical SPDIF output on the back of my motherboard.

HOWEVER! You'll need to go to System -> Preferences -> Sounds and explicitly select "VT1708S Digital" (instead of autodetect) in order to get the sound test to work.

So now I have it working in everything I use (MythTV, Totem etc) except for Amarok, but that's another issue.