SPDIF on hda-intel does not support more than two channels

[David lambert]

Description: Ubuntu 8.04
Release: 8.04

I cannot get my Intel ALC883/888 to work with S/PDIF IEC958 to work on anything except two channels

 aplay -L
default:CARD=Intel
    HDA Intel, ALC883 Analog
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC883 Analog
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC883 Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC883 Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC883 Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC883 Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC883 Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC883 Digital
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
null

Two channels work fine.

speaker-test -D iec958 -c 2

speaker-test 1.0.16

Playback device is iec958
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 = 5.632152

Does not work with any other number of channels e.g.

$ speaker-test -D iec958 -c 6

speaker-test 1.0.16

Playback device is iec958
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 6 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Channels count (6) not available for playbacks: Invalid argument
Setting of hwparams failed: Invalid argument

[Chris Jones (cmsj)]

I see this behaviour. I have an optical hookup to an amp with 5.1 speakers, but I can only do a 2 speaker test.
I don't have any way of easily telling if this is a flaw in speaker-test or if surround is really not supported.

[Florian Demmer (fdemmer)]

confirm with 8.10 (alsa 1.0.17), hw is aopen mp965-dr, has 3 jacks (mic, lineout, line in/spdif)
also autodetection does not work, had to set options snd-hda-intel model=3stack-6ch-dig to detect the iec958

besides speaker-test pulseaudio also does only allow setting 2ch!

pulseaudio 0.9.15 (test2) detects the digital out only as stereo (pacmd, list-cards):
"output-iec958-stereo: Output IEC958 Digital Stereo (priority 500)"

[Jon Smirl (jonsmirl)]

To make this work you need to use the a52 plugin for ALSA. a52 can't be shipped in Linux distributions because of patent problems. You need to install it manually.

[Christian Roessner (christian-roessner-net)]

I also can not use SPDIF with HDA Intel. But I have already installed the a52 stuff from medibuntu:

i A liba52-0.7.4 - library for decoding ATSC A/52 streams

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 8277
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22
 Memory at f9ff8000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
 Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

Already posted a bug for this. Maybe mine is a duplicate of this?

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-media/+bug/319281

[Yionel (yionel)]

Hi,

I have this bug also !!
http://forum.hardware.fr/forum2.php?config=hfr.inc&cat=11&subcat=207&post=71003&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=&trash_post=&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0#t1216293

Sorry it's in french

[tomeq_ (t-glowacki)]

Same here. No s/pdif multichannel output. Just digital stereo. Few words I've posted here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/pulseaudio/+bug/520157

The only sign of S/PDIF multichannel happens when tried with VLC S/PDIF direct output, but this gives strange beahvior on my amp (Dolby Digital and number of channels indicator flashes at random). No sound either.

[Jason Osbourne (it-blows)]

+1 for me too.
(Currently running Ubuntu 10.04)

I tried putting "ubuntu-bug audio" in terminal.
From the following menu I can choose:
SURROUND PLAYBACK PROBLEM (BUT STEREO PLAYBACK WORKS)
It then prompts me to confirm my sound system is plugged in and turned on.
From the next menu I can choose:
HDA-INTEL - HDA NVIDIA
The next screen after that tells me:
"You don't seem to have configured PulseAudio for surround output (iec958 stereo). Please correct that using pavucontrol or the GNOME volume control. Continue anyway?"
When I choose YES, I get this in the terminal:

symptom script /usr/share/apport/symptoms/audio.py crashed:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/apport/ui.py", line 49, in thread_collect_info
    package = symb['run'](report, ui)
  File "/usr/share/apport/symptoms/audio.py", line 33, in run
    package, channelcount = check_pulseaudio_profile(report, ui, card, problem)
  File "/usr/share/apport/symptoms/audio.py", line 194, in check_pulseaudio_profile
    cc = int(cc)/10 + int(cc) % 10
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: 'stereo'

Am I doing something wrong?
(This is my first attempt at trying to file a bug report - and I don't think it's working)

=(

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 8.04 (hardy) reached end-of-life on May 12, 2011.
And Ubuntu 10.04 (lucid) reached end-of-life on May 9, 2013.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

Please upgrade to the latest version and re-test.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for pulseaudio (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]