[unsound]

Hi,

I've been following XBMC beta development, but with the RC1 of XBMC 11 sound stopped working for me. Beta 3 works fine, so I'm sticking with it for now.
I'm on a PowerMac G5 Quad, so it's the ppc build.

When attempting to play a video file, this error turns up:

(Failed to initialize audio device. Check your audio settings.)

Of course I have played around with audio settings, but nothing seems to fix the problem.
Also the audio card is an external FireWire audio device. I don't think it should matter though since Beta 3 handles it perfectly. If I remove RC2/RC1 and install Beta 3, everything works.

I saw a similar thread but it seemed to be specific to the AppleTV, so I started a new one.
Any advice is appreciated.

Log file is here: http://pastebin.com/ap7jjwAq

- Erik

[davebv]

I have the same problem when using the external audio interface. I have tried with soundflower and it worked ok... I will try to post the log as soon as I try again.

[phi2039]

@unsound: Your audio device has more channels available than xbmc can guess the order for ("CCoreAudioDevice::GetTotalOutputChannels: Found 12 channels in 1 buffers"). This means that it cannot figure out how to downmix a 5.1 (6 channel source) to the 2.0 configuration you have specified in xbmc and then send it to the correct 2 (of 12) output channels on your Saffire interface. RC2 includes some reworked channel mapping code that is necessary to handle the wide range of possible input and output configurations. It also includes the following message from your logfile:
CCoreAudioRenderer::InitializePCM: Please go to Applications -> Utilities -> Audio MIDI Setup, and select 'Configure Speakers...'

Please try doing what the message suggests and see if that resolves the issue...

[unsound]

@phi2039: I have tried reconfiguring the speakers a few times in 'Audio MIDI Setup' but it didn't help. I always configure it in a 2-speaker config.

I'm curious why RC1 and RC2 both fail to play back the sound properly while Beta 3 plays back sound without any problems. A regression for sure?

[unsound]

@phi2039: Ok, so now it's actually working. I did some more rounds of configuring the device in 'Audio MIDI Setup' and suddenly XMBC accepted the config. So case closed for my part.

Some suggestions though:
- More helpful error message inside XBMC.
- Automatic Stereo fallback mode when XBMC can't determine channels.

Anyway, thanks for a great piece of software!