Reluctant Linux User

If any of you have experienced skipping and popping when seeking with vlc, you can try setting the audio sink to ALSA and one of the rockchip-es8316 options. That will smooth out the audio playback BUT you will quickly discover that anything pulseaudio related is locked out of using the soundcard while vlc is up. Instead, try this. Set vlc audio back to pulseaudio (or automatic, seems to map to the same thing) and then change these two lines in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf: -; default-sample-rate = 44100 -; alternate-sample-rate = 48000 +default-sample-rate = 48000 +alternate-sample-rate = 44100 Restart pulseaudio with systemctl --user restart pulseaudio and see if vlc plays nice with everything else as well as supporting smooth playback after seeking. It does for me. It seems that forcing pulseaudio to resample causes all sorts of hilarity (vlc seems to like putting everything out at 48000). I'm sure there's a reason why. I'm also sure if I know, I'll be sorry I do. I wonder, how hard is it to get the Vulkan video hardware decoding working? Has anyone gotten it to work?

Ok, the noble_vendor_gnome image actually works. Not out of the box, you have to select "headphones" and most important, the gnome self-test "front left, front right" doesn't work. That's what was fooling me to begin with. But if you play videos, that works just fine. So for anyone on down the line confused by all of this, you need to copy a known good video or soundfile over to see if it will play. Here's the armbianmonior -u for it in any case - https://paste.armbian.com/nutedakeco However, one problem solved, new problem shows up to take its place. The current_ kernel images I've tried no longer boot off the nvme now that I have a SATA drive connected! It just sits there and hangs. The vendor images work OK, although I am seeing the SATA drive mysteriously appear and disappear upon boot. I suppose I should start a new thread for that one? I see a big long thread about SATA drives already.

Ok. I've played around with several of the installs on the front page for Rock 5 ITX. It seems that the Rockchip BSP kernels are important, that and configuring pulseaudio correctly, it isn't configured correctly out of the box. It's the "headphone" card entry you need to set as the audio sink for some reason. And you need to turn the volume all the way up. But if you do those things, you get adequate audio. It's not perfect, it spits and pops but it works. Here's the armbianmonitor -u URL for a *working* install - https://paste.armbian.com/lefimociki Again, I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the Rockchip BSP, kernel related patches or blobs.

Armbian_25.2.2_Rock-5-itx_noble_vendor_6.1.99_gnome_desktop.img.xz I first tried this, as it was the first version offered at the top of the page. No matter what I tried, sound would *not* work. Not speakers, not HDMI, nada, zip. I then started trying earlier versions further down the page. Armbian_25.2.2_Rock-5-itx_bookworm_vendor_6.1.99_cinnamon-backported-mesa_desktop.img.xz And this one, sound *did* work, at least through the speaker jack anyway, but I suspect HDMI would too. I'm really suspecting something kernel related is going here (that "Rockchip BSP" note right above it makes me suspect that). In any case, I'd like to use the kernel where sound is working and put a gnome shell in front of it. Which I take means digging into the build system for armbian? I can figure that out on my own but before I get started on that, what I'm looking for from the forumistas, is an indication of which specific kernel I need to use to make sure sound works. What do I need to make sure to specify so I get the behavior of that second install that worked? And Cinnamon may be better or something, but gnome is what I'm used to.