So now I am playing with Rock64 4GB.  I installed the Armbian_5.65 server edition OS and then installed xorg, lxde, and lxdm., then rebooted into a working system.  Final stage of setting up was to test rhythmbox_3.4.2 and there was no sound. pavucontrol > playback shows the app is running and the worm is leaping about, but absolutely no sound. Same playing a .wav file with mpv, or indeed any player.

 

Is there something unusual about the audio socket, or some other limitation.

 

armbianmonitor -u = http://ix.io/ltt0

 

Sorry, that URL doesn't work, maybe due to similar characters.

http://ix.io/1ttO

that one-tee-tee-capital O
 

After installing alsamixer_1.1.3 and pressing f6 to get a list of all "cards", the menu offers 1. Default  2. HDMI 3. SPDIF, (matching the ALSA driver's output in armbianmonitor -u), and 4. "Enter a name ..." , with HDMI already selected.  My monitor doesn't have built-in sound, so I chose SPDIF ... but no sound.  "Enter a name ..." is preset to hw=1 but that doesn't produce any sound.

 

I installed aconnectgui, but that didn't explain what you could do with it.  I seem to remember once having an alsa gui app that showed lots of channels and sliders and mute buttons that did things pulseaudio couldn't do for itself, but it was a long time ago.

 

I installed alsa-utils, which gave me alsabat

$ alsabat
alsa-utils version 1.1.3

Entering playback thread (ALSA).
Get period size: 2756  buffer size: 22050
Playing generated audio sine wave
Underrun: Broken pipe(-32)
Entering capture thread (ALSA).
Get period size: 2756  buffer size: 22050
Recording ...
Playback completed.
Capture completed.

BAT analysis: signal has 65536 frames at 44100 Hz, 1 channels, 2 bytes per sample.

Channel 1 - Checking for target frequency 997.00 Hz
Amplitude: 20576.6; Percentage: [62]
Detected peak at 997.26 Hz of 35.89 dB
 Total 41.7 dB from 985.82 to 1008.70 Hz
 PASS: Peak detected at target frequency
Detected at least 1 signal(s) in total

Return value is 0
dk@desktop:~$

 

which looks interesting. 

 

I tried plugging in some headphones, and a USB speaker,which I think needs some driver I haven't got.

 

I need some guidance here.

 

 

No wait !  With the sound card set to SPDIF and the speakers plugged into the headphones socket on the monitor (obviously fed with HDMI) it works!

 

This has the advantage that when the HDMI input is switched from PC to TV from my set top box, the sound is switched as well, instead of requiring pulling one set of AV plugs out of the speakers and plugging the other set in.

 

Hope that saga helps someone.