So basically it works as expected. You should be able to get HDMI audio in the raw ALSA access like: % aplay -Dhdmi:0,0 foo.wav or % aplay -Dhdmi:0,1 foo.wav The former plays HDMI device on card#0 device#0 while the latter card#0 device#1. The device number isn't straight for HDMI because of historical reason, the device#0 of hdmi:x,y corresponds to PCM #3 and device#1 to PCM #7, etc.