I have recently switched my PC to linux and one aspect of functionality I have lost is the ability to send spdif music to my stereo system. I have a Chaintech 710 add-on soundcard and it seems difficult to make the linux music players send music there. I have succeeded for the gxine player but not for what I really want which is some sort of subscription music service. The only guys who seem to support Linux are Rhapsody RealPlayer/Helix and I cannot get that to send music to my spdif output not matter how much hacking I do.

I think the problem with Helix may be associated with it not using ALSA - I have tried the aoss program to emulate alsa but that doesn't seem to work either.

Curious if anybody has any ideas. I am not averse to changing sound cards or switching to a different subscription service if it was likely to work.

Peter

what distro are you using? Ubuntu has a pretty good comprehensive sound guide for setting up digital audio, and it seems to be fairly cross-platform . . .

Do you have an asound.conf file? If so, what is in it? Do you have alsa-oss installed? What about Pulseaudio? I have had loads of trouble getting various programs to use the digital output, and I still can't get firefox (for last.fm,pandora and yourtube) to use it reliably. Try running rhaposy from command line and see what it outputs. that could give you a clue as to what audio device it is trying to use.

First install alsa-oss module, then from the shell prompt type:

aoss firefox
login on the Rhapsody's Web based service

Rhapsody should work fine through the digital output barring it was working in the first place.