I've been building/using my own Linux distro for 10-15 years following
linuxfromscratch.org. My most recent build is from a few weeks ago based
on kernel 5.9.8. Something very strange happened today. I've been
essentially using the same ALSA/PulseAudio configuration for years and
all has been well routing audio through HDMI on a nVidia card. I've
always been able to address hw:1,7 without issue until today. It just
stopped working. The only thing that happened a few hours prior was a
Kodi crash (19 beta 1) at the beginning of playing a movie that would
have used pass-through audio.
After hours of troubleshooting, there are two key findings:
1. There are no errors anywhere. Any software (xmms, mpv, ffplay, etc.)
addressing hw:1,7 does not fail, but my receiver does not pick up the
stream.
2. Audio output works perfectly when addressing via logical device name:
hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1.
For point 1, I've read through
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture/Troubleshooting
and understand that it could be a hardware issue. This is all I can
think that it might actually be at this point, but I'm having a really
hard time continuing with that logic because all is well everywhere else
when using hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1. I've tried shutting everything down
(PC, receiver, projector) multiple times, and I've also tried plugging
in the source HDMI cable into my receiver WHILE the audio stream is
active.
For point 2, I can live with this since everything works, including
pass-through bitstreams, but does anyone know how to translate
hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1 for my ~/.asoundrc file? I haven't been able to
figure out how to do that instead of using the card/device/subdevice
parameters, and I often prefer to avoid PulseAudio and just do
everything direct.
Since most of the software I use can talk directly via
hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1 I'm in mostly good shape, and I do have a
workaround for Chrome by setting Pulse as the default in ~/.asoundrc and
loading the proper sink in Pulse as shown below (for anyone else who
might be in a similar situation). But this is a very strange and
puzzling occurrence, and I'd love to know if anyone else has experienced
this.
Thanks for reading!
Workaround for Chrome by using PulseAudio:
~/.asoundrc
pcm.pulse {
type pulse
}
ctl.pulse {
type pulse
}
pcm.!default {
type pulse
}
ctl.!default {
type pulse
}
/etc/pulse/default.pa
# What was...
#load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:1,7 channels=2
# ...is now...
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1 channels=2
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