Personal computing discussed

Moderators: renee, SecretSquirrel, notfred

 
Richie_G
Gerbil XP
Topic Author
Posts: 474
Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:22 am
Location: Swenglandmark.

ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Wed Oct 21, 2009 7:45 am

Hello all,

Forgive me if this is a recurring topic.

I'm completely new to Linux and have recently installed Jaunty Jackalope 64bit on this machine. So far I am enjoying it – it looks great, is smooth and responsive. There are a couple of quirks though, and while I usually relish problem solving as a good way of learning, there is one which is really hampering my enjoyment.

I'm using a Gigabyte EP35C-DS3R mobo, which uses Realtek's Azalia ALC889A codec. The problem is I am unable to get the multi channel pass through working properly. On VLC, for example, I have it set to use SPDIF and force detection, yet it will only pass through the front two L/R channels, regardless if the source contains more.

I know this is a Ubuntu 'thing' as it works fine in XP. Music and anything that's 2 channels works fine. I have ensured that the 'IEC958' box is ticked in the switches tab in the Alsa sound mixer as well. I have also set it to 6 channel output.

I'll add that I use SPDIF out to a receiver exclusively, and the receiver will, on the display, indicate which channels are being sent to it.

Oddly, I had the opposite problem when I had my old Audigy 2 card in the machine: I lost 2 channel PCM but the pass through for multi channel worked fine. I removed the Audigy because of it's 48khz resampling properties which the Realtek doesn't do, and after listening to music on both there was a very noticeable difference in the Realtek's favour.

I'd appreciate any help on this one, I've been doing some googlefu and this seems to be a fairly common occurrence, but as yet I've not found anything that I can understand or which works for me.
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."
 
Richie_G
Gerbil XP
Topic Author
Posts: 474
Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:22 am
Location: Swenglandmark.

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:36 am

891 views and no idea, I feel vindicated for having to ask! Well it's killed the Ubuntu dream for me, installed Windows 7 now.

Karmic Koala will be my next attempt, in a few days.
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."
 
just brew it!
Administrator
Posts: 54500
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 10:51 pm
Location: Somewhere, having a beer

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:57 am

FWIW I've been having some odd audio issues as well, most likely related to the fact that I have two soundcards installed. I will be testing with 9.10 as well to see if the audio management has improved...
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
mattsteg
Gerbil God
Posts: 15782
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2001 7:00 pm
Location: Applauding the new/old variable width forums
Contact:

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Sun Oct 25, 2009 12:01 pm

I stopped in earlier, and to be honest this is one of the reasons that I just don't quite see any *nix variety (other than OS X) to be truly viable on the desktop, even one that combines "friendliness" with a solid, flexible, and accessible foundation like Ubuntu does. There are certainly advantages, but the disadvantages still aren't trivial.
...
 
just brew it!
Administrator
Posts: 54500
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 10:51 pm
Location: Somewhere, having a beer

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Sun Oct 25, 2009 12:42 pm

mattsteg wrote:
I stopped in earlier, and to be honest this is one of the reasons that I just don't quite see any *nix variety (other than OS X) to be truly viable on the desktop, even one that combines "friendliness" with a solid, flexible, and accessible foundation like Ubuntu does. There are certainly advantages, but the disadvantages still aren't trivial.

I'd say whether the disadvantages matter or not is highly dependent on what the system is being used for.

I've been very happy with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS on my development desktop at work; the minor annoyances of using Ubuntu in that environment are far outweighed by the even greater hassles associated with running the WinXP image that has been blessed by our IT department. Hardware compatibility issues happen on the Windows side too -- for example, WinXP SP3 broke the Windows drivers for one of our HP multifunction printer/scanners. HP never released a fix. Now the only way to use the scanner on that device is from Linux! :roll:

Aside from the dual soundcard issues, I've also been pleasantly surprised at almost every turn by the Ubuntu 9.04 desktop I run at home; the sound issue has not been enough to convince me to switch back. (I do plan to play around with Win7 a bit though...)

For other people the tradeoffs may be different, and (like the OP) Linux may indeed not be a viable solution for them if they have certain specific show-stopper requirements. But I don't think you can make a blanket statement that it isn't "viable on the desktop".
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
mattsteg
Gerbil God
Posts: 15782
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2001 7:00 pm
Location: Applauding the new/old variable width forums
Contact:

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Sun Oct 25, 2009 12:52 pm

just brew it! wrote:
I'd say whether the disadvantages matter or not is highly dependent on what the system is being used for.
Agreed. That's been true for over a decade.
just brew it! wrote:
For other people the tradeoffs may be different, and (like the OP) Linux may indeed not be a viable solution for them if they have certain specific show-stopper requirements. But I don't think you can make a blanket statement that it isn't "viable on the desktop".
There are still enough showstoppers (whether they are application or hardware issues) and enough inconsistent showstoppers that I can't call *nix truly] "viable on the desktop." It's fine for an increasing number of use cases, but there are still too many niggles overall.
...
 
notfred
Maximum Gerbil
Posts: 4610
Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2004 10:10 am
Location: Ottawa, Canada

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Sun Oct 25, 2009 7:43 pm

mattsteg wrote:
There are still enough showstoppers (whether they are application or hardware issues) and enough inconsistent showstoppers that I can't call *nix truly] "viable on the desktop." It's fine for an increasing number of use cases, but there are still too many niggles overall.
That's been true for Windows for me for about 5 years now, and change increasing to decreasing.
 
Richie_G
Gerbil XP
Topic Author
Posts: 474
Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:22 am
Location: Swenglandmark.

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Thu Oct 29, 2009 10:26 am

Well I've just installed the release of Karmic Koala (9.10) and, of course, the first thing I am doing is seeing if the audio works. Lo and behold precisely the same problem as before. the more I look around the more users I see having similar problems.

I'm going to spend some time scratching my head on this one, seeing if I can get it working. I can't whine too much since it's a free OS, but I am surprised at how such a basic concept as SPDIF pass through can be so poorly implemented. I really like everything else about Ubuntu damn it!

If I had the knowledge I'd honestly be working my minerals off to help fix this, but alas I'm just your typical end user who doesn't have a clue. I'm curious about how you're finding the new release for handling audio though, JBI, and if it's fixed your dual sound card issues.
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."
 
bitvector
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
Posts: 3293
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2005 4:39 pm
Location: San Francisco, CA

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Thu Oct 29, 2009 5:26 pm

In some cases with feature toggles like that, I've found that the command-line alsamixer is able to control them while the graphical mixers (like gnome-alsamixer) don't work quite right. At least, the front audio jack toggles on my current sound card work that way. I couldn't get them enabled with gnome-alsamixer, but I could with commandline alsamixer.

Richie_G wrote:
I am surprised at how such a basic concept as SPDIF pass through can be so poorly implemented.
A question about the state of sound hardware support in the Linux kernel came up at the recent LinuxCon roundtable in Portland. Linus said it is one of the biggest nightmares just because of the sheer number of hardware differences: "It's a complex mess, and it's made worse by the fact that sound chips can be wired up about a million different ways. So you know, when you have the same chip -- you have it in vary many variations just whether it has audio out in digital SPDIF format, or internal microphones, and issues like that."

So, it may seem like a "basic concept" to you, but some boards have hardware toggles that change inputs to extra speaker analog outputs, multi-purpose inputs, etc. Just the sheer diversity in integrated (and discrete) sound hardware makes it very difficult for them to get every supported permutation of options working on every variant of the board. And, of course, not all manufacturers are forthcoming with salient hardware info to allow developers to do this in a straightforward manner. Obviously it's irritating if the one you want to use doesn't work, but you have to consider how feasible testing every possible integrated sound hardware setup is.
 
Richie_G
Gerbil XP
Topic Author
Posts: 474
Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:22 am
Location: Swenglandmark.

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Thu Oct 29, 2009 6:55 pm

bitvector wrote:
So, it may seem like a "basic concept" to you, but some boards have hardware toggles that change inputs to extra speaker analog outputs, multi-purpose inputs, etc. Just the sheer diversity in integrated (and discrete) sound hardware makes it very difficult for them to get every supported permutation of options working on every variant of the board. And, of course, not all manufacturers are forthcoming with salient hardware info to allow developers to do this in a straightforward manner. Obviously it's irritating if the one you want to use doesn't work, but you have to consider how feasible testing every possible integrated sound hardware setup is.


This realm is recondite enough for me as it is; my complaint about the 'basic concept' is typical of a clueless end user I've already to admitted to being. I must confess a large portion of my frustration is born from simply not knowing Linux well enough.

On the other hand I do still think that this problem with SPDIF pass through is an important one, and it’s one which seems to have prevailed through numerous iterations of the OS. While I may oversimplify things here, I can’t help but make the obvious Windows comparison. I have to ask (and no doubt much to the chagrin of some) why Windows manages to handle audio much less convolutedly? I honestly don’t understand: is it really all down to a simple lack of cooperation from hardware manufacturers?

My ignorance will encumber me here, but so far I keep getting back to Pulse Audio as being the root of all the evils that are troubling me. I decided to remove it using the synaptic package manager and it said it would have to uninstall Gnome to do so! I thought Ubuntu was meant to be modular! I just went and did it anyway to see what happens and unsurprisingly I broke a lot of stuff in the process which I don’t know how to fix without a fresh install.

I’d add that I’m not feeling much of this user friendliness that Ubuntu touts (Linux for Human Beings). In my quest to fix the audio problem I’ve ran into more walls than a wrecking ball – not least being root permissions. So far my experience has been more niggles than giggles, something which reflects on Ubuntu’s current reputation as being an almost but not quite Windows replacement for the general populous.

Don’t get me wrong though, I really like Ubuntu despite all the problems I’m having, and I am stubborn enough to stick with it if only to continue learning.
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."
 
bitvector
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
Posts: 3293
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2005 4:39 pm
Location: San Francisco, CA

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Thu Oct 29, 2009 7:05 pm

Richie_G wrote:
While I may oversimplify things here, I can’t help but make the obvious Windows comparison. I have to ask (and no doubt much to the chagrin of some) why Windows manages to handle audio much less convolutedly? I honestly don’t understand: is it really all down to a simple lack of cooperation from hardware manufacturers?
The major difference is that, with Windows, the hardware manufacturers typically write drivers for their hardware. In Linux, volunteers reverse engineer or re-implement them. So it's all about resources. In the first case, each hardware manufacturer does a little bit of the hardware support work. In the second case, the community has to do all of the work for most classes of hardware. That's a big disadvantage. (Yes, that is oversimplified, because Microsoft writes a fair number of drivers for Windows, and some Linux drivers -- most notable graphics, but a lot of Intel chipset stuff -- are written by hardware companies; still, that's been the dominant model. The fact remains that hardware manufacturers can't expect to release hardware without developing some level of Windows driver support. Who would buy it?)

Richie_G wrote:
I’d add that I’m not feeling much of this user friendliness that Ubuntu touts (Linux for Human Beings). In my quest to fix the audio problem I’ve ran into more walls than a wrecking ball – not least being root permissions.
Perhaps you could elaborate a bit on your trouble with root permissions?

Richie_G wrote:
So far my experience has been more niggles than giggles, something which reflects on Ubuntu’s current reputation as being an almost but not quite Windows replacement for the general populous.

See, I wouldn't promote it as a Windows replacement, but an alternative with different trade-offs.
 
Richie_G
Gerbil XP
Topic Author
Posts: 474
Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:22 am
Location: Swenglandmark.

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Thu Oct 29, 2009 7:36 pm

bitvector wrote:
The major difference is that, with Windows, the hardware manufacturers typically write drivers for their hardware. In Linux, volunteers reverse engineer or re-implement them.


Aye I see what you mean; I imagine it must be a significant hindrance to the development of the OS and also its perceived implementation as a credible alternative by the many Windows thralls.

bitvector wrote:
Richie_G wrote:
I’d add that I’m not feeling much of this user friendliness that Ubuntu touts (Linux for Human Beings). In my quest to fix the audio problem I’ve ran into more walls than a wrecking ball – not least being root permissions.
Perhaps you could elaborate a bit on your trouble with root permissions?


Hmm, probably not now because I’ve just broken it and I’m bloody tired. But off the top of my head I kept on having issues with gedit not saving because of lack of permission (including running from the terminal [if that makes a difference]) and when I tried running in root from the terminal it could not authenticate the password, even though the password is definitely correct. It’s sketchy but I just don’t have any more details on the rest of the issues right now. Perhaps later I can add a bit more when I go through the motions of reinstalling the OS and trying again with the audio.
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."
 
just brew it!
Administrator
Posts: 54500
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 10:51 pm
Location: Somewhere, having a beer

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Fri Oct 30, 2009 12:29 am

Richie_G wrote:
bitvector wrote:
The major difference is that, with Windows, the hardware manufacturers typically write drivers for their hardware. In Linux, volunteers reverse engineer or re-implement them.

Aye I see what you mean; I imagine it must be a significant hindrance to the development of the OS and also its perceived implementation as a credible alternative by the many Windows thralls.

IMO it goes beyond that. Not only are the drivers written mostly by volunteers; historically there have been multiple different sound APIs from different development teams as well. Incompatibilities between the various approaches have contributed to the confusion. PulseAudio seems to be emerging as the de facto standard (it is a serious attempt at consolidating and unifying things), but it is still far from perfect, and the audio situation is nowhere near completely settled.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
bitvector
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
Posts: 3293
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2005 4:39 pm
Location: San Francisco, CA

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Fri Oct 30, 2009 2:55 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Not only are the drivers written mostly by volunteers; historically there have been multiple different sound APIs from different development teams as well. Incompatibilities between the various approaches have contributed to the confusion. PulseAudio seems to be emerging as the de facto standard (it is a serious attempt at consolidating and unifying things), but it is still far from perfect, and the audio situation is nowhere near completely settled.
Yeah, the userland audio solutions and APIs have been somewhat fragmented, but we don't know at what level of the support stack the problem is caused. If we're talking about hardware support and the problem is that the driver can't properly set the hardware to SPDIF audio out mode, then none of that really comes into play -- at the lowest level it's all basically ALSA sound card drivers (unless you use the out of kernel and rarely-used-on-Linux OSS4). On Linux, PulseAudio is just a higher-level layer on top of ALSA sound drivers. I guess to narrow it down, you could get a program like mplayer (which supports a ton of different higher-level audio APIs) and try the different permutations of -ao alsa, oss, pulse, and so forth (and make sure it's using native and not ALSA via PulseAudio via ALSA).
 
rmkimathi
Gerbil In Training
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:58 am

Re: ALC889A Multi Chan. Pass Through Ubuntu 9.04

Mon Apr 19, 2010 12:20 pm

My media PC is as follows:
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R Rev1.1, ALC889A Sound, 32-bit LinuxMint 8 (helena) same as Ubuntu 9.10, VLC 1.0.5, Yamaha 5.1 Receiver, using optical audio

Two issues are the problem:

Fix 1: Sound preferences > uncheck "enable window and button sounds" > check mute on "alert volume" > "output volume" to 100%

Fix 2: VLC preferences > show settings simple > Audio > check "use S/PIF when available" > "Output Type" = ALSA audio output > Effects uncheck "Volume normalizer" > show settings All > "Audio output frequency (Hz) = 48000 > "Replay gain mode" = None > Uncheck "peak protection"

Leave all other settings as default. **** Reboot ****

The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound now will be flawless on VLC and SMPlayer. Enjoy and look forward to LinuxMint 9!!

Cheers

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest
GZIP: On