[pulseaudio-discuss] {PATCH][RFC] AC3 passthrough support

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Sat, 2010-07-10 at 15:40 +0000, Michael Rans wrote:
> Regarding AC3 encoding in Pulseaudio - it would be better because at
> the moment switching between stereo and A52 is not possible (ie. I
> cannot have both these lines in default.pa:
> load-module module-alsa-sink device=Filter_RateConvert rate=48000
> sink_properties=device.description=AC3 sink_name=AC3
> load-module module-alsa-sink device=ALC889A_Digital
> sink_properties=device.description=SPDIF sink_name=SPDIF
> 
> Presumably the SPDIF out is locked by one of them, then the other
> fails. With ac3 encoding in Pulseaudio, this would be switchable
> without editing any files.

Switching between stereo and a52 does not require doing the encoding in
pulseaudio. Pulseaudio already provides both stereo and a52 spdif
profiles for alsa cards with spdif output. The a52 profile uses the alsa
plugin to do the encoding. The only problem is, as you know, that the
a52 alsa plugin doesn't seem to work with pulseaudio (at least without
the rate converter workaround). Fixing the plugin (or pulseaudio, if the
cause actually is in pulseaudio) instead of implementing ac3 encoding in
pulseaudio would be a perfectly fine solution.

-- 
Tanu Kaskinen