[SOLVED] HDMI sound problem

[Just17]

In short .....  I cannot hear any audio from the HDMI input connected to a PC running PCLOS.

The motherboard is  MSI H61MA-E35 (B3) mATX   CPU Pentium G630  on board graphics

I have PulseAudio installed and can clearly see the audio stream volume variations in the GUI ....  and it is shown as going to the HDMI output.

Yet nothing at the TV end ....  and yes the same HDMI input of the TV plays the output from a Set Top Box without problems.

I have tried two HDMI cables .....  both new and of different makes, purchased at different times in different shops.



Let me say now that I have zero experience with HDMI out to TVs from PCs.


Only thing I noticed that appeared odd to me is that KDE CC - Display shows entries for two HDMI outputs, and plugging in the TV to the HDMI socket shows it connected to the second of the two, with the first greyed out.

Is it normal to have two HDMI devices show in KDE CC?

The reason I raise this is that the only way I can imagine (at present) the sound stream being lost, is, if it is being sent to the wrong HDMI output.

All ideas and suggestions welcome.

Any further info needed please ask .....

[CaptainSarcastic]

Have you checked your mixer settings?  I'm wondering if you might need to turn on the HDMI output in the mixer, rather like I have to when I plug in USB headphones here.

[Just17]

Thanks Capt!  Mixer was OK.

I found it!

The sound was indeed being sent to the wrong place ......  but not to a different output, but to the wrong section of the HDMI output.

The 'HDMI' card has several outputs .....  analogue, digital and hdmi.

It seems that the default card was the HDMI (only sound card in the PC), but the default device was analogue = card 0, device 0 .......  whereas the HDMI output socket is  card 0, device 3.

So I created a text file called  ~/.asoundrc with the following lines

Code: [Select]

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 0
device 3
}

Now the sound is correctly routed to the HDMI socket of the sound card by default.

To find out the correct 'device' of the sound card I used

aplay -l   [lower case L not number 1]

which listed the card and its devices.


Hopefully that might be useful to others who hit this problem.




It has made me wonder why PulseAudio is not (it seems) using the correct device ....

[Just17]

Update:

Because I use PulseAudio, I tried to find a way to ensure PulseAudio addressed the correct device.

I appear to have succeeded ......  by this means .....

I deleted the .asoundrc file (or rename it for the moment)

Then I edited the  default.pa file to uncomment the
"load-module module-alsa-sink"
line and edit it to ensure it used the 'correct' device of the sound card

load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,3

That's it!

Tests will continue, but all seems correct at this time.




EDIT:
           I should add here that the default.pa file I edit is   ~/.pulse/default.pa   and not the system-wide default.pa file found in  /etc/pulse/
  Simply make a copy of the system-wide file, and apply your edits to the user copy ....  easily accessible and does not affect other accounts on the system.

I have previously used this scheme to apply other edits to this file, for other purposes.