I seem to only be able to do consumer electronics

[Laura Conrad]

>>>>> "scott" == scott j o'brien <scottrules at gmail.com> writes:

    scott> Have you tried to play with the basic ALSA settings? I have
    scott> found that turning on the various channels one by one will
    scott> let you figure out what you need to enable for your SPDIF
    scott> to work. Use the M key on each channel to determine which
    scott> are muted by default. I have done this for both onboard and
    scott> PCI audio setups and been successful with both.

So you don't fool with pulseaudio at all?  Or have you removed or
killed it before you start fiddling with alsamixer?

    scott> Here is the link that will show you how alsamixer and alsactl work:
    scott> http://linux.dsplabs.com.au/alsamixer-and-alsactl-store-adjust-and-save-alsa-mixer-settings-p29/

It looks like I should be able to send sound to the alsa stuff by
using the device name hw:0,1, because "aplay -l" says:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC888 Analog [ALC888 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: ALC888 Digital [ALC888 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

But when I say "aplay -D hw:0,1 <filename>.wav", it doesn't give me
any error messages, and seems to think it's playing something, but I
don't hear any sound.

When I run gnome-alsamixer while I'm "playing" the file and click and
unclick boxes, it doesn't make any difference.

Of course, it could be that the digital input, which I've never used,
on this set of speakers is broken, or even that I have the cable
plugged into the wrong place on the sound card.  I'm using the orange
jack that's next to the green jack that I get analog sound out of.
There's another orange jack underneath, but I think that's for rear
speakers or something.

-- 
Laura   (mailto:lconrad at laymusic.org)
(617) 661-8097	233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139   
http://www.laymusic.org/ http://www.serpentpublications.org

There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.

Brendan Behan (1923 - 1964)