# digital output snd_cmi HT Omega Striker



## dc0m (Dec 2, 2010)

Hello,

I am trying to get my optical/digital audio to work, but without any progress. I have HT Omega Striker 7.1 audio card, and it's connected to my A/V receiver via optical cable. I'm using snd_cmi driver. Driver is loaded, but I get no sound. In the past I have used this card in FreeBSD without digital output successfully using the same snd_cmi driver. I couldn't find any documentation that explain how to enable digital output. I'm having a feeling I need to use sysctl setting to set it to digital output, but I don't know how. I've poke around in KDE system settings and Kmix but nothing worked out. 

Here is the output of `cat /dev/sndstat` 

```
FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm: 64bit 2009061500/amd64)
Installed devices:
pcm0: <CMedia CMI8738> (play/rec) default
```

One more thing. Every time I login in KDE I get pop-up window saying:

```
KDE detected that one or more internal sound devices were removed.
Do you want KDE to permanently forget about these devices?
This is the list of devices KDE thinks can be removed:
Capture: CMedia CMI8738 (pcm)
Output: CMedia CMI8738 (pcm)
```
It gives me yes, no and manage devices option. If I go to manage devices, multimedia system settings opens. In there I have CM8738(pcm) listed, and CMedia CMI8738 which is grayed out. Selecting first one and clicking TEST button does nothing. 
I do have one integrated (I belive it's hda intel) audio chip, but I'm not planning on using that one, and I've never loaded drivers for it.
If you need any additional info please let me know. 

Thanks in advance.


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## mav@ (Dec 2, 2010)

I have no idea about this card/driver, but quick looking through snd_cmi sources told me that there could be some sysctl named like dev.pcm.X.spdif_enabled. Try set it to nonzero value.

Suppose it may be not your case, but integrated HDA audio may have own SPDIF port. snd_hda driver should support digital output perfectly. For digital signal it is not important how cool is your sound card.


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## dc0m (Dec 2, 2010)

Thanks for your reply. 

Unfortunately I don't have SPDIF out on my integrated sound card. I've already tried dev.pcm.0.spdif_enabled, but nothing changed after doing that.

I will try to research why is that pop-up box is showing up every time saying that my sound card have been removed. Because I think the grayed out card listed is the one that I actually need (Output: CMedia CMI8738 (pcm)).

I've read somewhere also that OSS is needed in order to get digital output to work. I'm not sure if that is correct. I've tried searching, but I don't get many hits when searching OSS FreeBSD and digital output.


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## dc0m (Dec 2, 2010)

*[solved]*

I got it working. For some reason it did not want to work with default FreeBSD sound modules. In case someone else has the same problem, the following describes how I got it working:

Disable current sound module/s from loading on boot. (remove entry from /boot/loader.conf, in my case I removed snd_cmi_load="YES").

Install OSS: 

```
cd /usr/ports/audio/oss && make install clean
echo 'oss_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf
```
Reboot the system. Now in phonon (for anyone using KDE4) you will have only OSS output enabled. This was not enough to get optical output and sound working. I had to change some values using ossmix. In my case I did:

```
ossmix spdif.optical ON
ossmix spdif.play ON
```
Those are pretty self-explanatory. Run ossmix in terminal to see current settings, and set them accordingly


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