Ubuntu Multimedia :: Sound Over HDMI With ION2?

I have a Giada Slim-N20 running XBMC-Live 10.1 (Ubuntu v.10.04.1). It is hooked up by HDMI to my two-speaker TV. I don't think XBMC is my problem, however. Out of the box, XBMC supports sound over HDMI (if you tell it to use it), but when I try to run ZSNES, I only get sound through the headphone jack on the side. Now, the one problem with XBMC is that menu sounds go through the default device (i.e. the headphone jack) rather than the device selected in its settings (in my case, the HDMI port). In order to fix that problem, my .asoundrc looks like this:

Code:

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave {
pcm "hw:1,3"
}
}

Unfortunately, this does not fix ZSNES for some reason. Even worse, I no longer get sound through the headphone jack. What does fix ZSNES, however, is this strange hack that has been making the rounds on the XBMC forums. First, you download a modified version of HDA-Intel.conf found here. It appears to route everything through pcm.!remap-surround71. Then, you use this asound.conf:

Code:

pcm.!hdmi-remap {
type asym
playback.pcm {

[code]....

This almost fixes everything. Unfortunately, when I try playing a video with AC3/Dolby Digital, I get a screechy, garbled mess. Videos with mp3 and DTS work fine, however. what the asound files or the modified HDA-Intel.conf are trying to do. My guess is that something with the 7.1 mapping is screwing up AC3. And my hunch is that such a hack is way too complicated just to tell ZSNES to use the HDMI port. And, yes, ZSNES is instructed to use SDL or ALSA (neither appears to make a difference).