Linux Mint 13 with no SPDIF output

ok, here the story start: 

I'm connecting my PC to pioneer amplifier with SPDIF and HDMI to Sony LCD TV, hoping I'll get an hours fun with joy of watching movie, and than FXXK ! I only got stereo sound output ! what the fxxk is going on here ?what about surround sound and sub-woofer ?

so I surf on the net, searching for fix.

background: 

I'm using Linux Mint 13 with Cinnamon, audio chip is Realtek ALC888

and the first dumb thing I ever do, is trying to fix stereo problem by using alsa-hda-dkms 

and after reboot, all I got is a "Dummy Soundcard", with that, my sound system going from stereo to totally silent, what a great progress ~ 

so, dont't do it, if your computer's internal sound card is newer than 2008, STOP INSTALL alsa-hda-dkms

if you do install that, here's a fix

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/UpgradingAlsa/DKMS

an hour later ~ 

after I took alsa-hda-dkms down, I still didn't have my audio card back

here's a guide to help get out from "Dummy soundcard"

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iTlJ8BfqXUjaHO__TEdlkvuqB1WLOkGaudngc5SFLMI/edit

My problem was "no soundcard" in /proc/asound/cards

so I took this fix:

Procedure Ac (Make the system/ALSA recognize the sound card(s))

after reboot, solve the problem.

from no sound at all get into stereo, great, isn't it ? 

but the real problem still there, "surround sound" 

here's fix.

reference: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=59877&page=42

[*]sudo rm /etc/asound.conf

[*]sudo rm /usr/share/alsa/cards/HDA-Intel.conf

[*]sudo wget http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=f5f9654bb -O /etc/asound.conf

[*]sudo wget http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=f2e38265 -O /usr/share/alsa/cards/HDA-Intel.conf

[*]sudo reboot 

but actually I don't have to do with /etc/asound.conf, so I change it back to this:

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 0
}
ctl.!default {
type hw
card 0
}

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=694781#c1

Additional info:

Comment 1 Eddie Lania 2011-04-16 16:10:57 EDT

It took me a lot of googeling but i found the solution.

1. I had to put the line: "options snd-hda-intel model=3stack-6ch-dig power_save=10" to /etc/modprobe.d/dist-alsa.conf.

2. Reboot.

3. Start alsamixer and with F6 select "0 HDA Intel"

4. Use left/right arrow keys to select "Channel"

5. Use up/down arrow keys to select "4ch".

6. Push escape key to exit alsamixer.

7. Execute "pulseaudio -k".

8. Execute gnome-volume-control and go to the tab "Hardware" and select Profile "Analog Surround 4.0 Output + Analog Stereo Input".

Done.

Comment 2 Eddie Lania 2011-04-17 05:29:38 EDT

After a reboot, I found out that the 4 channel settings as I set them in comment #1 , were restored to 2 channel settings again.

So, I went googeling again and found a workaround.

After doing the steps 1 to 8 as described in comment #1, do the following additional steps also:

9. log in as root

10. Do "alsactl store 0 alsamixer_config_0"

11. Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.local and add the line "/sbin/alsactl restore 0 alsamixer_config_0"

12. save the changes and reboot.

done

Now, why does this whole soundcard multichannel thing has to be so complicated?

There should be a better, more user friendly solution.

Comment 3 Eddie Lania 2011-06-02 07:10:59 EDT

Same issue exists in F15.

Comment 4 Eddie Lania 2011-07-31 14:03:35 EDT

This is getting frustrating; in order to keep the settings as i described them in comment #1 and comment #2, i have to redo them over and over again because they disappear after a while. I guess some package updates are responsible for "undoing" my changes.
Anyway, this has to be solved so that my multi-channel adaptations are being kept permanently.

Regards,

Eddie.

ok, problem solved, thanks to you guys ~