at first, thanks alot for the help. perhaps i "not see the wood for the trees" (is this right in english). wanna say, perhaps im just too stupid...
here are some debuggin outputs, for just to be sure that alsa works for me:
cat /dev/urandom >/dev/dsp works, get this funny white noise out of my speakers.
alsamixer screen: ---------------------------------- Card: C-Media PCI CMI8738-MC6 Chip: CMedia PCI View: [Playback] Capture All Item: Master ----------------------------------
$ cat /proc/asound/devices 0: [ 0] : control 4: [ 0- 0]: hardware dependent 16: [ 0- 0]: digital audio playback 17: [ 0- 1]: digital audio playback 18: [ 0- 2]: digital audio playback 24: [ 0- 0]: digital audio capture 26: [ 0- 2]: digital audio capture 33: : timer
$ cat /proc/asound/pcm 00-02: CMI8738-MC6 : C-Media PCI IEC958 : playback 1 : capture 1 00-01: CMI8738-MC6 : C-Media PCI 2nd DAC : playback 1 00-00: CMI8738-MC6 : C-Media PCI DAC/ADC : playback 1 : capture 1
-------------- without -ao: -------------- Dec 24 20:57:32 gockels-video vdr: [4525] [softdevice-audio] Opening alsa device default Dec 24 20:57:32 gockels-video vdr: [4525] [softdevice-audio] Using alsa AC3 device hw:0,1 Dec 24 20:57:33 gockels-video vdr: [4525] [softdevice-audio] Playback open error: default, No such device FATAL exiting -------------- with -ao alsa:pcm=default -------------- Dec 24 20:59:19 gockels-video vdr: [4698] [softdevice-audio] Opening alsa device default Dec 24 20:59:19 gockels-video vdr: [4698] [softdevice-audio] Using alsa AC3 device hw:0,1 Dec 24 20:59:19 gockels-video vdr: [4698] [softdevice-audio] Playback open error: default, No such device FATAL exiting -------------- with -ao alsa:pcm=default#ac3=default# -------------- Dec 24 21:01:37 gockels-video vdr: [4977] [softdevice-audio] Opening alsa device default Dec 24 21:01:37 gockels-video vdr: [4977] [softdevice-audio] Using alsa AC3 device hw:0,1 Dec 24 21:01:37 gockels-video vdr: [4977] [softdevice-audio] Playback open error: default, No such device FATAL exiting -------------- with -ao dummy: -------------- Dec 24 21:03:30 gockels-video vdr: [5290] [softdevice-audio-dummy] Device opened! Ready to play
so, its true, i've no spdif output on this card. but when you can tell softdevice what $dev_name (as mentioned in the softdevice readme) it should use for ac3 output (for it insists on using this), where do i get the $dev_name from? my driver is called cmipci, doesn't work. /dev/dsp or audio doesn't work either... xine can do a down-mix, and i get sound from vdr with xine plugin for example. on the other hand, there was a time, when i had 5 speaker connected to this card and heard nice digital surround sound from a dvd.
i just can't get the idea behind all this (did i said this things about my foolischness?)