Hi! I think just found an issue with PulseAudio. I'd like to discuss it here before I open a bug, because I'm not sure if it is really an issue. My goal is to connect my notebook to a 5.1 surround amplifier via SPDIF. For that purpose I have bought a Creative USB Sound Blaster X-Fi HD. It was a good choice for the features I need. The X-Fi HD works almost plug-and-play. When I connected it via USB, it was immediately detected by PulseAudio. Even the volume knob worked out of the box. My amplifier also detected a signal on the SPDIF line, and I selected the IEC958 port in pavucontrol. However, I could not play anything. The sound was just muted regardless of all the pavucontrol settings I tried. I searched the web and found other people having the same issue, and also one solution. It seems that the SPDIF output is a different hardware device. [1] In the /etc/pulse/system.pa I added this line: load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,1 After a restart, I was finally able to hear sound! However, the SPDIF output is now shown as a separate Output Device in pavucontrol. It also does not offer the "Advanced" options for setting AC3 and DTS. (According to the ALSA vendor matrix, the X-Fi HD SPDIF output supports AC3 and DTS.) The IEC958 port of the original X-Fi HD device is still shown and still functionless. Now I wonder... Shouldn't PulseAudio detect and map the hw:0,1 device to the IEC958 port, so the system.pa tweak is not necessary? If you need any command or log outputs, please let me know... I don't have much experience with PulseAudio and ALSA, though. I'm using Fedora 20. Thanks for your help! [1] http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.alsa.user/36028 -- Regards Richard K?rber
