[gentoo-user] ripping my hair out with audio over hdmi

[Matt Harrison <iwasinnamuknow@genestate.com>]

I've googled for days, tried upteen different settings and nearly gone 
bald and I still cannot get audio over hdmi working on this nVidia ION 
chipset.

I've made tiny bits of progress here and there which (reading many many 
MANY forum posts) should mean it is working, but no.

Is there anyone here who has managed this? someone who would be willing 
to go through some things with me and get this working.

The HDMI output shows up fine in "aplay -l" and "aplay -L", I can use 
speaker-test or aplay on the card/device with no errors. I've tried 
muting/unmuting everything in alsamixer (several analog related channels 
plus 3 s/pdifs).

Analog audio works without problems but no matter what I try I cannot 
get HDMI working.

I would be so grateful if someone could help, I'm literally about to 
throw it all out of the window thanks to all these smug ubuntu people 
saying how easy it was to get working :P

Many thanks

Matt