[pulseaudio-discuss] Accessing audio as root

[Daniel Chen]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 10:53 AM, Colin Guthrie <gmane at colin.guthr.ie> wrote:
> Actually is this safe to do - i.e. disabling it wholesale? Is it not
> used for digital output in some capacity (e.g. if the user picks a
> digital profile)? Or is it perfectly "safe" to just turn it off all the
> time? I don't have this h/w so can't easily test...

Using "off" is only safe for analog output. To correctly fix this
issue on Lives/Audigys, we need:

1) alsactl to mute 'IEC958 Optical Raw' at boot via its init db
2) PA to set "off" for above mixer control for analog profiles and
"on" for IEC958-enabled ones

I chatted briefly with Lennart some time ago on IRC about this mixer
control, and he was of the opinion that ALSA needs to correctly set it
at boot (which would be accomplished via (1)).

Thanks!
-Dan