envy24control and Chaintech AV-710

[joshuapurcell]

I just received my digitalRCA-to-Toslink adapter from Newegg, which allows me to connect my ADA880 Speakers to my AV-710 sound card. Audio works find when I use the analog connection, but now that I've switched to the digital connection I get no sound. The weird part is that I can goto System->Preferences->Multimedia Systems Selector and test my audio out (without changing from the default 'Autodetect' option) and the test passes with a sound coming out of the main two speakers. When Ubuntu starts up however (or when playing any games) I get nothing.

I've found this tool called envy24control which seems to do exactly what I need it to do, but every time I try to run the program it give these errors:

joshua@jlpdesktop:~/programs/quake4$ envy24control
No ICE1712 cards found
joshua@jlpdesktop:~/programs/quake4$ envy24control -c 0,0
invalid card type (driver is ICE1724)
joshua@jlpdesktop:~/programs/quake4$ envy24control -c 0,1
invalid card type (driver is ICE1724)

I've read a little about editing my /etc/asound.conf file, but I don't know where to begin. I'm going to start just trying different configs out, but it would help out alot if anyone who has this card AND has digital output working properly could give me some details on how they set things up. I've followed this guide somewhat, but things haven't worked out for me yet. Here's is more information on my setup:

joshua@jlpdesktop:~/programs/quake4$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: AV710 [Chaintech AV-710], device 0: ICE1724 [ICE1724]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: AV710 [Chaintech AV-710], device 1: IEC1724 IEC958 [IEC1724 IEC958]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
joshua@jlpdesktop:~/programs/quake4$ aplay -L
...some stuff...
cards 'cards.pcm'
front 'cards.pcm.front'
rear 'cards.pcm.rear'
center_lfe 'cards.pcm.center_lfe'
side 'cards.pcm.side'
surround40 'cards.pcm.surround40'
surround41 'cards.pcm.surround41'
surround50 'cards.pcm.surround50'
surround51 'cards.pcm.surround51'
surround71 'cards.pcm.surround71'
iec958 'cards.pcm.iec958'
spdif 'cards.pcm.iec958'
modem 'cards.pcm.modem'
phoneline 'cards.pcm.phoneline'
dmix 'cards.pcm.dmix'
dsnoop 'cards.pcm.dsnoop'

Thanks for any help. Let me know if there is any more information needed.

EDIT: I found this website with information on the ALSA config files (/etc/asound.conf and .asoundrc) which says that neither of these are needed in order to have digital output work in later versions of ALSA, and I'm running 1.0.11. This makes me think twice about whether or not I need to spend time figuring out what these files should look like... I think the problem is somewhere else.

[joshuapurcell]

Looks like I do need a properly configured /etc/asound.conf file in order for my setup to work properly. Here is the file that finally did the trick:

pcm.envy_spdifdmix {
        type dmix
        ipc_key 1337
        slave {
                pcm "hw:0,1"
                format S32_LE
                rate 44100
        }
}

pcm.envy_spdif {
        type plug
        slave {
                pcm envy_spdifdmix
        }
}

pcm.!default {
        type plug
        slave {
                pcm envy_spdifdmix
        }
}

# For ogle
#
pcm.!spdif {
        type plug
        slave {
                pcm "hw:0,1"
                format S32_LE
        }
}

# For mplayer ao (mplayer -ac hwac3 -ao alsa1x:mplayer)
# For vlc, use mplayer as alsa device
#
pcm.!iec958 {
        type plug
        slave {
                pcm "hw:0,1"
                format S32_LE
        }
}

pcm.mplayer {
        type plug
        slave {
                pcm "hw:0,1"
                format S32_LE
        }
}