It would be cool if amarok could be configured to pass (dts, ac3, and/or
multichannel PCM) through sdif/toslink/iec958.

In mplayer, this works with this:

> mplayer -ac hwac3,hwdts, -channels 6 -ao alsa:device=iec958 <dts/ac3 file to play>

Is it possible in amarok, too?

Amarok doesn't handle sound itself, it lets Phonon do so.
Since you are using Kubuntu you most likely have Pulseaudio running, check there (assuming this is about the latest versions of Amarok and KDE and Kubuntu which you sadly didn't tell).

Well, I'm completely aware that phonon is the multimedia abstraction that KDE (and thus amarok) uses. And beneath phonon there (often) is xine, but maybe something other...

However, for me this looks a lot like developer stuff. An end user just don't care. AFAIK, at present, passthrough must be configured not even at the phonon level, but on the xine level.

http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=116&t=73362
http://alsa.opensrc.org/DigitalOut

Frankly, this is completely unacceptable for a 'real' end user. It even is some kind of voodoo for an experienced software developer.

My question is: Am I missing something here? Is there a more simple, 'end user style' way to configure this?

First of all: the phonon-backend-xine is deprecated and unmaintained, please use the gstreamer or vlc backend instead.

Besides the fact that your pass-through request is far from being typical for an end user (and most users and even some developers will not even understand what you are talking about), you didn't even read my second sentence above apparently, else you would know that you should check out Pulseaudio

Also, some more information about your versions of KDE, Amarok and Kubuntu would be appreciated...

Well,

I disagree. The end user that really uses a sdif/toslink/iec958 connect just assumes that the raw digital data will be transferred to his amplifier. And (s)he will wonder: 'No improvement with toslink? But this is a difference with that on Windows! I will stay with that OS for surround sound!'.

There is no such problem with VLC directly. It has the right options in the settings to fiddle around with.

GStreamer is more difficult. There is a plugin for the job (http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-ugly-plugins/html/gst-plugins-ugly-plugins-plugin-iec958.html). But it is difficult to use without any support from the 'frontend' (might it be amarok or phonon). And my question is about this kind of support for the end user.

Kind regards,

aanno

Well, as I said, you didn't read what I wrote: check out Pulseaudio! I move this to the forum where it belongs as it has nothing to do with Amarok itself.

Sorry to disagree once more. AFAIK pulseaudio isn't responsible for this kind of things, i.e. one of the more upper layers (something like: amarok, phonon, ?gstreamer?) has to tell pulseaudio (and alsa) what to do.

If you still disagree look on the problem from this point of view:

• Why has VLC options to configure/enable this in its GUI?
• Why has GStreamer a plugin to enable this?
• And for KDE: Who is responsible for configuring the GStreamer pipeline?

PS:
If the move to KDE/Multimedia means that you think it is more a phonon question: I'm fine with that.