[pulseaudio-discuss] Hal detect and multiple outputs

[Jon Smirl]

On 5/23/08, Jon Smirl <jonsmirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/23/08, Lennart Poettering <lennart at poettering.net> wrote:
>  > On Fri, 23.05.08 16:11, Jon Smirl (jonsmirl at gmail.com) wrote:
>  >
>  >  > I have Intel HDA audio hardware with both a digital (S/PDIF) and
>  >  > analog output. When I used module-hal-detect pulse only provided one
>  >  > sink, 0, which was the analog device.  I fixed this by manually
>  >  > creating two alsa sinks in pulse config, one for hw:0,0 and hw:0,1.
>  >  >
>  >  > Shouldn't pulse and hal been able to automatically figure out that I
>  >  > have two alsa sinks and given me the option to choose?
>  >
>  >
>  > Yes, of course. Would be awesome. However, neither HAL nor ALSA
>  >  provide enough information about whether the SPDIF and analog outputs
>  >  are exclusive to each other or not.
>  >
>  >  If they are not exclusive (which is the case on most devices) we need
>  >  to be able to switch the output during runtime.

Are you sure they aren't exclusive most of the time? S/PDIF is
assigned a separate slot in both the HDA and AC97 protocols. That
makes me think that they should be exclusive in most hardware. Now of
course the driver may be cloning the output in software.

I have five different audio chips on my desk and they all have S/PDIF
and analog out on separate hardware channels. I'm working the STAC9766
driver to add support for S/PDIF out.

> When they are not exclusive there should only be one ALSA device.
>  I have two playback devices.
>
>  jonsmirl at terra:/proc/asound$ cat devices
>   0: [ 0]   : control
>   6: [ 0- 2]: hardware dependent
>   16: [ 0- 0]: digital audio playback
>   17: [ 0- 1]: digital audio playback
>   24: [ 0- 0]: digital audio capture
>   33:        : timer
>
>  I expected HAL to give me a choice of the two playback devices. The
>  are both visible in gnome-device-manager.
>
>  I can tell the analog one from the digital one by the label.
>  pcm0p name: STAC92xx Analog
>  pcm1p name: STAC92xx Digital
>
>
>  >  What has been on my todo list for a while now is a) the ability to
>  >  autoprobe which combinations of analog/digital/recording are available
>  >  and b) a way to be able to switch output ports a sink during runtime.
>  >
>  >  It's unfortunately not trivial to do. So please be patient.
>  >
>  >  Lennart
>  >
>  >
>  >  --
>  >  Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
>  >  lennart [at] poettering [dot] net         ICQ# 11060553
>  >  http://0pointer.net/lennart/           GnuPG 0x1A015CC4
>  >  _______________________________________________
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>  >
>
>
>
> --
>
> Jon Smirl
>  jonsmirl at gmail.com
>


-- 
Jon Smirl
jonsmirl at gmail.com