Hi,

From what I've seen about ac3 in and also out, the support in alsa for
that is more of a hack, and the data that is passed down the pcm
interface actually contains the channel status bits for some drivers...
Working on the new Apple stuff this isn't possible -- only some channel
status bits can be set by the software, some are fixed. And they aren't
interleaved in the stream, but set externally.

So the question is -- are there any plans to abstract some digital out
API within alsa? Otherwise the userspace will need to handle all kinds
of different devices differently since the data on the stream is
essentially the same as the data the chipset needs.

johannes