<SOLVED> Asus Xonar DG: no sound through S/PDIF

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benoitsmith
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<SOLVED> Asus Xonar DG: no sound through S/PDIF

Post by benoitsmith »

Greetings,

I have been a happy Lint Mint 17.3 user for some time, and since the very beginning I have been using PulseAudio for everything sonic. Recently I acquired a Asus Xonar DG sound card, because I was eager to get 5.1 Surround sound for my PC. So far, I have failed to achieve this - I can get analog sound, but no digital sound, and I wish I could get the reason why.

Here is my output for "sudo lspci -v | grep -A7 -i audio":

Code: Select all

01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0fba (rev a1)
	Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 3202
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
	Memory at f7080000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3
	Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
	Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
	Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
--
05:00.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CMI8788 [Oxygen HD Audio]
	Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. CMI8786 (Xonar DG)
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 19
	I/O ports at c000 [size=256]
	Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2
	Kernel driver in use: snd_oxygen
Now here is the content of my /etc/pulse/daemon.conf :
# This file is part of PulseAudio.
#
# PulseAudio is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# PulseAudio is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
# General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
# along with PulseAudio; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307
# USA.

## Configuration file for the PulseAudio daemon. See pulse-daemon.conf(5) for
## more information. Default values are commented out. Use either ; or # for
## commenting.

; daemonize = no
; fail = yes
; allow-module-loading = yes
; allow-exit = yes
; use-pid-file = yes
; system-instance = no
; local-server-type = user
; enable-shm = yes
; shm-size-bytes = 0 # setting this 0 will use the system-default, usually 64 MiB
; lock-memory = no
; cpu-limit = no

; high-priority = yes
; nice-level = -11

; realtime-scheduling = yes
; realtime-priority = 5

; exit-idle-time = 20
; scache-idle-time = 20

; dl-search-path = (depends on architecture)

; load-default-script-file = yes
; default-script-file = /etc/pulse/default.pa

; log-target = auto
; log-level = notice
; log-meta = no
; log-time = no
; log-backtrace = 0

resample-method = speex-float-1
; enable-remixing = yes
; enable-lfe-remixing = no
enable-lfe-remixing = yes

flat-volumes = no

; rlimit-fsize = -1
; rlimit-data = -1
; rlimit-stack = -1
; rlimit-core = -1
; rlimit-as = -1
; rlimit-rss = -1
; rlimit-nproc = -1
; rlimit-nofile = 256
; rlimit-memlock = -1
; rlimit-locks = -1
; rlimit-sigpending = -1
; rlimit-msgqueue = -1
; rlimit-nice = 31
; rlimit-rtprio = 9
; rlimit-rttime = 1000000

; default-sample-format = s16le
; default-sample-rate = 44100
; alternate-sample-rate = 48000
default-sample-format = s24le
default-sample-rate = 192000
default-sample-channels = 6
; default-channel-map = front-left,front-right

default-fragments = 8
default-fragment-size-msec = 10

; enable-deferred-volume = yes
deferred-volume-safety-margin-usec = 1
; deferred-volume-extra-delay-usec = 0
Of course, I have pavucontrol installed. However, in its Configuration tab, the only options offered to me for the Xonar card are of type "Analog 5.1" and "Digital" (without 5.1). And the "Digital" ones don't work at all.

One interesting thing: I tried to change the S/PDIF settings via alsamixer, saving the changes via "alsactl store". Not only it had no effect, but my S/PDIF setting wasn't event saved!

Thanks in advance for all the enlightenment you can bring to me on that matter!

Best regards!
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
benoitsmith
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Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2013 2:37 pm

Re: Asus Xonar DG: no sound through S/PDIF

Post by benoitsmith »

One more clue: when I plug the optical cable into the S/PDIF port of the sound card alone, shouldn't I see the unplugged end of the cable turn red because of the transmitted signal? Currently, nothing like this happens (but it happens with other source hardware, so I guess the cable should not be blamed).
justanotherlmuser

Re: Asus Xonar DG: no sound through S/PDIF

Post by justanotherlmuser »

Hello, fellow Xonar user. Optical S/PDIF can only transmit a stereo lossless signal or a lossy bitstream (DTS, various Dolby encoders) at a time. Getting optical output to work as a 5.1 sound counterpart 24/7 instead of on special occasion (like watching a movie with encoded audio stream) is tricky in general on any OS, because you have to trick OS' audio system into mixing 5.1 channels instead of just stereo (which is what happens for optical ports by default) and then mix those with encoder before finally transmitting it via S/PDIF. This will require both ALSA and Pulseaudio config trickery. Exact encoder name need will depend on your receiver's specifications. The oldest and the most compatible is Dolby Digital. So what you need to search for is "Dolby Digital over S/PDIF".
benoitsmith
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Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2013 2:37 pm

Re: Asus Xonar DG: no sound through S/PDIF

Post by benoitsmith »

Hello, justanotherlmuser,

Thanks for the advice. I found a lot of information about the trickiness you're talking about, and thus I could make the "Surround 5.1 Digital" options available. However, nothing in it seems to explain why, no matter what I do, I can't even get a single sound coming from that S/PDIF port. Could it be a limitation of the support of the card?
benoitsmith
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2013 2:37 pm

Re: Asus Xonar DG: no sound through S/PDIF

Post by benoitsmith »

OMG, I think I made it!

The thing is, alsamixer wouldn't save any of my settings, for some reason, so I used Qasmixer. Then I found that "S/PDIF loopback" was checked - I thought that option wasn't of any use for me, and unchecked it. Well, I couldn't exactly tell why, but that seemed to enable S/PDIF output, and now I have the surround sound I dreamed of!

Thank you again for suggesting me where to unearth the useful info!
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