Difference between revisions of "Pulse"
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| − | If you have spent days and days fucking around trying to get sound to work with your NVidia 220GT HDMI, you have to use hw:0,7 not hw:0,3 which is the first thing | + | If you have spent days and days fucking around trying to get sound to work with your NVidia 220GT HDMI, you have to use hw:0,7 (not hw:0,3 which is, it turns out, the first AND ONLY thing Pulse sees), and then you need to unmute it in ALSA. |
sudo apt-get install alsamixergui | sudo apt-get install alsamixergui | ||
| − | Run alsamixergui and UNMUTE ALL FOUR | + | Run alsamixergui and UNMUTE ALL FOUR SPDIF CHANNELS. It was apparently decided that leaving them muted by default was the sensible and least frustrating thing to do. |
== Support for 24 bit 96 kHz audio == | == Support for 24 bit 96 kHz audio == | ||
Revision as of 04:20, 26 May 2012
If you have spent days and days fucking around trying to get sound to work with your NVidia 220GT HDMI, you have to use hw:0,7 (not hw:0,3 which is, it turns out, the first AND ONLY thing Pulse sees), and then you need to unmute it in ALSA.
sudo apt-get install alsamixergui
Run alsamixergui and UNMUTE ALL FOUR SPDIF CHANNELS. It was apparently decided that leaving them muted by default was the sensible and least frustrating thing to do.
Support for 24 bit 96 kHz audio
Make Pulse use 32 bit samples in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf and bump up the sample rate:
default-sample-format = s32le default-sample-rate = 96000
Surround sound
Since I have a surround HDMI amplifier, I use this in /etc/pulse/default.pa after the autodetect phase (which you might still want for when you plug in USB devices, for instance):
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,7 channels=6 \ channel_map=front-left,front-right,rear-left,rear-right,front-center,lfe
and in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf you need:
default-sample-channels = 6 default-channel-map = front-left,front-right,rear-left,rear-right,front-center,lfe
Dolby Digital and DTS "pass-through" streaming
There isn't currently a way to pipe the Dolby Digital or DTS streams directly to the amplifier without abandoning Pulse altogether and reverting to ALSA. However, these days decoding even 24/96 surround in Pulse uses pretty negligible CPU, and even when using ALSA it blocks the audio device. It also means you can enjoy all those annoying alarms, random pop-up beeps and messaging alerts while you watch your movies.