oss_hdaudio(7) Intel High Definition Audio (AZALIA)

DESCRIPTION

Open Sound System driver for Intels high definition audio known as "Azalia". This driver supports Intel 915/925 chipsets with the Realtek ALC880 and CMedia 9880 8 channel codecs.

The HDA driver supports:

  • 8-96Khz Playback/Recording
  • 8 or 16 or 32 bits
  • 2, 4, 6 or 8 channel audio.
  • SPDIF digital output and Input
  • AC3 passthrough

HDAUDIO MIXER

The Intel HDA mixer is a new type of mixer that doesn't have the normal volume controls found on AC97 or legacy SB devices. The HDA mixer presents a concept of Jacks and you can configure any jack to be either an output or an input jack.

Some motherboards may not correctly initialize the jacks according to their color and functionality but in general here's the configuration that should generally be followed:

o Orange = Center/LFE
o Blue = Line-in
o Black = Rear
o Green = Front
o Grey = Side
o Pink = Mic

Some Azalia codecs support front panel connectors and so if you see fp-green and fp-pink connectors, then these are for front panel speaker and mic/line-in Jacks.

There is a function selector for most of the analog audio jacks (for example connector.pink.mode). This selector is used to control if the jack is used as an input (microphone or line in) or output (front, rear, side, speaker, etc).

KNOWN PROBLEMS

In general Azalia based systems (laptops/motherboards) would require a custom driver to work properly. Due to enormous number of different systems it is not possible to develop such custom drivers for all systems. A generic driver is used for systems that don't have dedicated drivers.

Unfortunately the mixer and control panel interface (see ossmix(1)) for "generic" systems is very cryptic and difficult to understand. To solve problems with volumes or signal routing you need to start ossxmix(1) and change the controls one at time until you get the desired effect.

OPTIONS

o hdaudio_jacksense
enables jack sensing mode when the hdaudio driver is loaded. In this mode all I/O pin's that are not in use will be disabled as well as the mixer controls that are related with them. In this way the mixer/control panel will become more intuitive. However OSS will need to be restarted with soundoff; soundon every time new inputs or outputs are attached to the audio jacks. Default : 0.

NOTE! hdaudio_jacksense=1 works only in some systems. Many laptops and motherboards don't support jack sensing.

o hdaudio_noskip
Disable skipping unconnected jack. All mixer controls will be shown, even for disabled I/O pins. Can get values 0-7. 1-7 is a bitmask, where every bit masks a different check. Bit 3 (= value 4) overrides jacksense check too. Default: 0 - unconnected jacks are skipped.

FILES

/etc/oss4/conf/oss_hdaudio.conf Device configuration file

AUTHOR

4Front Technologies