Nvidia HDMI audio - Device not shown

Question

Nvidia HDMI audio is a widely asked topic, but I've not been able to find the answer for my case.

Card displayed by lspci

$ lspci
...
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF114 [GeForce GTX 560 Ti] (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF114 HDMI Audio Controller (rev a1)

Device displayed by aplay

$ aplay -l
...
card 2: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

All outputs unmuted by alsamixer

But the card does not appear in the Sound controller from System settings.

I'm currently using "nvidia-325" driver, but I tried "nouveau" and several other versions

My HDMI output is detected to be /proc/asound/card2/eld#1.0

$ cat /proc/asound/card2/eld#1.0
monitor_present     1
eld_valid           1
monitor_name        DENON-AVAMP

connection_type     HDMI
...

speaker-test does not find the device

$ speaker-test -c 2 -r 48000 -D hw:2,3

speaker-test 1.0.25

Playback device is hw:2,7
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Playback open error: -19,No such device

Can someone help me with my problem ? Or at least tell me why doesn't my device appear on sound settings ?

Answer 1

I have some issues myself, but so far I have discovered that you need to test the different id's:

speaker-test -c [2/6] -r 48000 -D hw:2,[3,7,8,9]

-c [2/6] - test in stereo or 5.1

hw:2,[3,7,8,9] - 2 is the ID of your card, but as you can see from the list there are 4 different options. Only one of these give me audio.

I have no idea why this has to be so complicated, so I would love to see someone answer this more thoroughly, but I hope my answer at least helps you along the way.

Answer 2

When speaker-test fails, all other programs using alsa-lib should also fail with -D hw:2,3.

Playback open error: -19,No such device looks like speaker-test tries to open the wrong device:

prompt:> strace -o trace.log speaker-test -c 2 -r 48000 -D hw:2,3
prompt:> less trace.log

should reveal the device name alsa-lib tries to open.
From a first view, I'd say it's a bug in alsa-lib as it tries to open card0, device3 instead of card2, device3. A temporary fix would be to use symbolic links pointing to the correct device...