Bug#578720: vorbis-tools: Sends invalid argument to ALSA when playing some files

[Martin Steghöfer]

tags 578720 wontfix
thanks


Hi John!

On Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:44:50 +0100 John Talbut <jt at dpets.co.uk> wrote:
> Playing:  /data/Sounds/Barbara_Allen.ogg Ogg Vorbis stream: 1 channel,
> 44100 Hz ALSA snd_pcm_hw_params_set_channels error: Invalid argument
> Error: Cannot open device alsa.

The error message here is a bit cryptic. What it tries to say is: Your 
output device doesn't support Mono playback and no software in the 
output pipeline (that probably looks somewhat like the following in your 
case) is willing to do the necessary upmixing:

ogg123 -> libao -> ALSA -> device driver -> hardware

Doing the upmixing in ogg123 is certainly out of its scope and libao 
also seems too simple. ALSA has plugins to support upmixing [1] [2]. The 
device driver or the hardware are certainly harder to replace. You could 
also put a sound server like pulseaudio in the middle, that could do the 
upmixing, too.

Alsacap [3] seems like an interesting tool to check, which modes your 
current ALSA configuration supports.

Cheers,
Martin


[1] 
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture#Upmixing
[2] https://packages.debian.org/jessie/libasound2-plugins
[3] http://www.volkerschatz.com/noise/alsa.html#alsacap