HDMI Audio on OPi Lite (Jessie server, legacy kernel)

[Chacal]

I'm trying to get audio out work on Orange Pi Lite using HDMI. aplay -l lists sndhdmi as card #1 and I have set it up as default in ~/.asoundrc. aplay -v shows it being used, but my AV receiver doesn't recognise the Pi nor output any sound. The same cable & receiver works fine with e.g. Macbook Pro.

 

Should the HDMI audio output work in the legacy Jessie server image for OPi Lite? If yes, how could I debug more why it doesn't seem to work?

 

[Da Alchemist]

Did you check:

speaker-test -D hw:1 -c 2

this should give you pink noise on the fronts

 

Regards

[Chacal]

Did you check:

speaker-test -D hw:1 -c 2

this should give you pink noise on the fronts

 

Regards

 

Yep, tried that in addition to aplay & mpg123. The result is still the same, however. No sound & the AV receiver doesn't recognize the PCM (or any other) input format.

[Da Alchemist]

Do you have video out via HDMI?

[Chacal]

Do you have video out via HDMI?

 

Apparently no. Though I didn't expect that from the server image either. I think I'll try the desktop image to see if the HDMI is working for me at all or not.

[Chacal]

Apparently no. Though I didn't expect that from the server image either. I think I'll try the desktop image to see if the HDMI is working for me at all or not.

 

And just as I suspected both the video and audio work just perfectly with the desktop image.

 

What kind of differences there are between the OPi Lite desktop & server image that might influence the HDMI output? I noticed the kernel cmdline to have different options, but there probably is much more I'm not aware.

 

Is there any reasonable way to get the HDMI audio work on the server image or is it better to stick with the desktop one and just try to strip it down to better suit server use (disable X etc..)?

[Chacal]

And now, after flashing the server image again, everything, of course, works just fine out-of-the box.. 

 

So probably there was something wrong with the image at the first time as I get both audio & console video via HDMI now.

[Chacal]

Just a small addition to this if someone else wants to do the same..

 

In order to use pulseaudio with HDMI audio out on server image these lines need to be in the /etc/pulse/default.pa:

load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0                        # Just add 'tsched=0' at the end of the existing line

set-default-sink alsa_output.platform-sndhdmi.analog-stereo    # Use HDMI as Pulseaudio's default audio sink 

To use plain Alsa these should be in the /etc/asound.conf:

ctl.!default {
    type hw
    card 1              # card 1 is the HDMI output
}

pcm.!default {
    type plug
    slave {
        pcm "hw:1,0"
        rate 48000      # Upsample all output to 48kHz as HDMI seems to support only 44.1kHz or 48kHz
        channels 2
        format S16_LE
    }
}