No sound through HDMI out, 13.04

I just installed Ubuntu 13.04 on my media PC, and I successfully installed Catalyst 13.4 and everything works great except I get no sound out of HDMI out. In the sound dash there are 3 options but none make any difference: there is digital output (S/PDIF) ,headphones, and analogue output. Any help is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Solution 1:

It's bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1169761

The kernel team introduced this by picking and choosing patches. The generic 3.8 kernel doesn't have it, and Ubuntu 13.04 kernels older than a mid-April are also ok.

I'm sure this is getting a lot of attention since it affects so many.

Solution 2:

1. Don't downgrade your kernel
2. Keep the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="radeon.audio=1" in /etc/default/grub
3. Run: sudo update-grub, and
4. Restart the system.

This worked for me. HDMI sound showed up in the sound output panel.

Solution 3:

I don't know if it is the problem you are facing, but there is a bug in kernel (see here and here) that makes sound card driver crash on boot. To verify if it is indeed the same problem, check in var/log/syslog for something like this:

 BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request at <address>

This should be fixed in the following days/weeks. Meanwhile you can try to install the latest drivers as suggested in the bug report (worked for me):

• Go to ALSA daily build snapshots;
• Select "Raring" in Series;
• In "Package Files" download the .deb file, install it and restart.

Sorry for not posting a direct link to the file, but as this is a daily build probably the link would quickly become broken.

Edit

Just to point out: as this is a daily build (Ubuntu packages are recreated daily), depending on the time you check that page the .deb may not be available. If this happens you will have to check again later.

Solution 4:

Downgrading to linux kernel 3.5.0.30 solves the problem.

1. Keep the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="radeon.audio=1" in /etc/default/grub
2. When starting the system, in GRUB2 menu, select "Advanced options" and some old linux kernel to start (3.5.0-30-generic in my case).
3. If the sound works, remove the files of the 3.8 linux kernel from the /boot directory (need sudo).
4. Run: sudo update-grub
5. Restart the system

It worked in my case, however ymmv.