[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH 2/2] alsa: Better volume control handling, especially for S/PDIF.

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Sun, Apr 06, 2014 at 06:27:06PM +0200, Ingo Brückl wrote:
> Reimar Döffinger wrote on Sun, 6 Apr 2014 17:52:12 +0200:
> > (Though if you were to use a full soundcard with both spdif and
> > normal output, you could have had any effect, e.g. it might have
> > had working volume control or you might have gotten no volume control
> > at all)
> 
> There is no spdif volume control for me with or without the patch (although
> the volume bar is displayed when pressing 9 or 0 - but it's always a 0% bar).

I assume you tried PCM, not passthrough? There will be no volume control
with passthrough no matter what.

> > But if you (e.g. using alsamixer) mute the spdif device you should
> > notice that there was no way to make it produce sound using MPlayer
> > before.
> 
> I can't mute spdif with or without the patch. Although I'm getting the
> information that the device is muted, it isn't. Unmuting updates the
> information, but there is sound all the time - without any issues.

I was talking about unmuting after muting in an external application.
If you can't mute/unmute in an external application it won't work
in MPlayer either, but normally you should have a mute/unmute switch
for the SPDIF outputs.
If you have multiple, chance are MPlayer picked one that you don't
have connected, so it won't do anything.
You'd need to use -mixer-channel.
And this is all assuming you are using -mixer if the default mixer
device doesn't control your SPDIF output.