[atandon]

I have xbmc running on my 2011 mini. For audio, I am using the SPDIF/optical port to connect to my receiver while the hdmi port goes to the TV.

When xbmc is running, it seems to take "ownership" of this optical port.
For instance, if I have itunes running at the same time, my itunes music gets directed to the hdmi port (thats connected to the TV). No audio goes out thru the optical port (except for content played inside xbmc).
But as soon as I exit xbmc, the music gets redirected to the optical port

Any ideas. I like to keep itunes running in the background so that i can access my music from the remote app on the phone while the TV is turned off. Also like the equalizer that itiunes has. Would have loved to move over to xbmc for music as well but the lack of a decent equalizer makes it difficult.

Would like to avoid having to manually exit xbmc everytime i want to listen to itunes

[Soli]

XBMC needs to take ownership of the optical audio port whenever there is a DTS/DD soundtrack and you have enabled that particular setting to stream DTS/DD as a raw soundtrack. It can be argued that it XBMC should give ownership back whenever you are in the home menu or you are playing a movie with only a MP3 soundtrack. It might qualify for a bug if it is not.

[atandon]

Agreed. It should "release" the port after exiting the movie and returning to the main menu. But this doesn't appear to be the case.

Can someone from the xbmc team confirm that this may be a bug

[davilla]

What you ask is not possible within the current XBMC for Mac audio handling structure. Remember that GUI sounds are also active and where do they get sent ?

[atandon]

Good point. Kind of similar to having two processes write to the same file.
But w.r.t. your statement - "What you ask is not possible within the current XBMC for Mac audio handling"
Does that mean this may work on other operating systems?