<html><head><style type="text/css"></style></head><body><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><div>I have a theory that the $CARD doesn't work for me and may not for others because of the way in which the %f in a52:%f is generated. Would I be right in saying that %f is incremented for each source or sink ie. you cannot have both iec958:0 and a52:0? I see in my logs: I: alsa-source.c: Successfully opened device hw:2. I: alsa-mixer.c: Successfully attached to mixer 'hw:2' ... I: alsa-sink.c: Successfully opened device iec958:0. I: (alsa-lib)control.c: Invalid CTL iec958:0 I: alsa-mixer.c: Unable to attach to mixer iec958:0: No such file or directory I: alsa-mixer.c: Successfully attached to mixer 'hw:0' ... I: alsa-sink.c: Successfully opened device hdmi:1. I: (alsa-lib)control.c: Invalid CTL hdmi:1 I: alsa-mixer.c: Unable to attach to mixer hdmi:1: No such file or directory I: alsa-mixer.c: Successfully attached to mixer 'hw:1' I also see: D: alsa-mixer.c: Checking for playback on Digital Surround 5.1 (IEC958/AC3) (iec958-ac3-surround-51) D: alsa-util.c: Trying a52:0 with SND_PCM_NO_AUTO_FORMAT ... D: alsa-util.c: Managed to open a52:0 D: alsa-util.c: Maximum hw buffer size is 21824 ms D: alsa-util.c: Set buffer size first (to 3840 samples), period size second (to 480 samples). D: alsa-mixer.c: Profile output:iec958-ac3-surround-51 supported. But no "Successfully opened a52:0". My theory is that because :0 is already taken by iec958:0, Pulseaudio doesn't accept the a52:0 sink. If I replace $CARD with 0, my log says: I: alsa-sink.c: Successfully opened device a52:1. Do you think my theory is correct? If not, any better one? Cheers, Mike </div><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><hr size="1">From: pl bossart <bossart.nospam@gmail.com> To: General PulseAudio Discussion <pulseaudio-discuss@mail.0pointer.de> Sent: Tue, 13 July, 2010 21:21:50 Subject: Re: [pulseaudio-discuss] {PATCH][RFC] AC3 passthrough support Adding this in /etc/asound.rc (more exactly /etc/alsa/pulse-default.conf on my Fedora box) work fine: pcm.a52 {   @args [CARD]   @args.CARD {       type string   }   type rate   slave {       pcm {           type a52           bitrate 448           channels 6           card $CARD       }       rate 48000 #required somehow, otherwise nothing happens in PulseAudio   } } a52:0 is detected by PulseAudio and the encoded output shows as 'Digital Surround 5.1 (IEC958/AC3) in pavucontrol. </div></div> </div> </body></html>