Valve's Gabe Newell Makes New Linux Comments

[caligula]

Nah cmon. Games don't need to know anything about systemd pulseaudio or similar stuff - what a rediculous excuse.
Whats the point using Linux while all the effort goes into cloning MS/Apple monoculture? Seriously, you can't bring sucess to "Linux" by forcing it to be a bad copy of something else. The advantages flexibility, diversity, freedom and control should be written bold, not be hidden as different-than-windows-defect.

Ever heard of immersive multi-channel audio in games? For example think of Doom 3. When it was published, there was 5.1 EAX for Windows and 2.0 stereo for Linux. While Linux version was faster, I had to use Windows to get the audio experience.

[caligula]

Sorry but EAX is integer you insensitive clod!!

I don't know how EAX works or A3D, but it would be nice if you could control the env 5.1/7.1/9.1 sounds with OpenAL. AFAIK it's the only open API for multi-channel sounds in gaming. For those who don't know http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environ...dio_Extensions

[e8hffff]

Two most exciting companies, Value + NVidia.

[tomtomme]

Agreed the situation will be a lot better when most Linux systems run systemd, pulseaudio, bluez5, kernel 3.10+, btrfs, wayland, opengl 4.0 capable gpu drivers.
Problems that remain are: how to output digital multichannel audio to your receiver. Currently I don't know if any Linux technology does this. If it does, it uses legacy DD or DTS lossy audio. For example I tried this with pulseaudio and multichannel routing only works with analog for me. Tried with 5 nvidia cards with hdmi output, intel, sound blaster audigy 2, external DACs.
On top of that game distribution might need a single package manager. While all of them have advantages, the package management isn't a hard task. We could do better and have only one. One that also supports per user app installation so that you don't need to be superuser.

The coming XBMC version 13 (gotham) is even capable of HD Audio stuff (7.1 channels, maybe more) through passthrough. Checkout the beta 1 that was released some days ago
yey
Don?t know about other players - does anyone know about the state of this in vlc, mpv etc?

[GraysonPeddie]

I'd like to refer everyone to the forum rules here:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?15-Forum-Rules

01.) Absolutely no flaming, name calling, sexual harassment, or other personal attacks will be permitted. Respect everyone, including the moderators and administrators.

Please keep this thread professional and show respect to each other in the forum.

Thanks.

I'm not a moderator, but I'm doing everything I can to help out in this forum.

[Tinuva]

Agreed the situation will be a lot better when most Linux systems run systemd, pulseaudio, bluez5, kernel 3.10+, btrfs, wayland, opengl 4.0 capable gpu drivers.
Problems that remain are: how to output digital multichannel audio to your receiver. Currently I don't know if any Linux technology does this. If it does, it uses legacy DD or DTS lossy audio. For example I tried this with pulseaudio and multichannel routing only works with analog for me. Tried with 5 nvidia cards with hdmi output, intel, sound blaster audigy 2, external DACs.
On top of that game distribution might need a single package manager. While all of them have advantages, the package management isn't a hard task. We could do better and have only one. One that also supports per user app installation so that you don't need to be superuser.

Really? I converted my HTPC to SteamOS and moved my XBMC install over to that. Upgraded my receiver. Pulseaudio forced me to not make use of passthrough. Now the audio gets decoded by XBMC and sent like that to PulseAudio, which then sends it out as LPCM to the receiver (set to A.F.D. which mean it doesn't convert stereo to 5.1) which then outputs 5.1 just fine. Using an old Intel Icedale motherboard, onboard HDMI.
Seems to me PulseAudio can do multichannel just fine. That said, it was indeed a mission to get 5.1 to work over HDMI in the first place, however most of this is down to the implementation in SteamOS.

[tomtomme]

Really? I converted my HTPC to SteamOS and moved my XBMC install over to that. Upgraded my receiver. Pulseaudio forced me to not make use of passthrough. Now the audio gets decoded by XBMC and sent like that to PulseAudio, which then sends it out as LPCM to the receiver (set to A.F.D. which mean it doesn't convert stereo to 5.1) which then outputs 5.1 just fine. Using an old Intel Icedale motherboard, onboard HDMI.
Seems to me PulseAudio can do multichannel just fine. That said, it was indeed a mission to get 5.1 to work over HDMI in the first place, however most of this is down to the implementation in SteamOS.

PulsAudio can decode normal DTS and DolbyDigital (5.1) but not more. If you want DolbyTrueHD or DTS-HD Master you need XBMC 13 beta without pulse-audio and just passthrough (without decoding) instead. I have installed pulse nevertheless for the rest of the system and just kill it when I start xbmc - see my howto if you like:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174854&pid=1546145#pid1546145

Works like a charm

[TheBlackCat]

I'd like to refer everyone to the forum rules here:

Considering you are brand new here, there is something that I need to point out to you: nobody enforces those rules, so they might as well not exist. People will act how they will act, good or bad. Reminding people of the rules will get you absolutely nowhere, on the contrary it will just annoy everyone since it will have no effect and contributes nothing to the discussion.

[GreatEmerald]

Actually, reporting posts does work. Just that the moderators are not monitoring many topics here (and they act only on really bad flamewars).

[caligula]

PulsAudio can decode normal DTS and DolbyDigital (5.1) but not more. If you want DolbyTrueHD or DTS-HD Master you need XBMC 13 beta without pulse-audio and just passthrough (without decoding) instead. I have installed pulse nevertheless for the rest of the system and just kill it when I start xbmc - see my howto if you like:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174854&pid=1546145#pid1546145

Works like a charm

Right but this isn't how it should work. You shouldn't need to kill PA. My issue is, I use the PA remote audio sometimes to redirect movie / game sounds to my HTPC receiver. In that case it won't pass through multichannel even from dvd. So it only works if the receiving end uses analog.