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Streamerke · 2012-05-18, 00:37

Hi,

I recently started having problems with all media that has AAC encoded audio, like movies and Youtube.

Until recently all of this worked fine. Since a few days all media with AAC sound does not play anymore, I get slow motion or a frozen image without sound.

I have a debug log but this is not revealing an error. I have tried several things including re-install of XBMC but nothing works. Can anyone tell what is going wrong here and what I can do to correct it?

Regards

**steelman1991** · 2012-05-18, 12:31

What build are you using Streamerke - if you are using a newer 'nightly' build I don't think AAC is playable unless your reciever can encode the format natively - see here http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=124600&page=47 post #464

Streamerke · (This post was last modified: 2012-05-18, 13:55 by Streamerke.)

Good question:

I was using the latest official release Eden v11.0 but I have tried the build with the HD audio patch. I think but I am not sure that it is from this moment on that my problems with AAC audio started. Again I am not sure but that is what I thought. It is because of this that I have re-installed the official v11.0 however this did not solve the problem.

This morning I noticed something strange. Just by trial and error I changed the audio output to coax/optical and ... suddenly I got sound + movie played at normal rate. Very strange because the only cable I use is an HDMI one.

Well, this does not solve the problem but at least I have a workaround.

Streamerke · 2012-05-18, 20:36

Seems I don't have a workaround.

At first I could make AAC encoded files play by toggling the audio output options. When HDMI switched to coax/optical or no matter what else I got sound. But then something happened that caused no media to play anymore. It seems you can break XBMC just by changing some settings. If this is true XBMC is not a table solution at all.

Finally I removed XBMC all together and I deleted every file and folder that referred to XBMC. Then I installed again and I got a fresh installation. Now everything works as before. I lost my database but I can live with that, 98% is scraped correctly anyway.

Would like to know though how this is possible? How can XBMC get screwed up internally just by making use of the user interface. The only thing I ever did was install Eden 11.0 and install the HD patched Eden 11.0.

DDDamian · 2012-05-18, 21:05

You probably have (had) <passthroughaac>true</passthroughaac> in your guisettings.xml

Streamerke · 2012-05-19, 08:45

(2012-05-18, 21:05)DDDamian Wrote: You probably have (had) <passthroughaac>true</passthroughaac> in your guisettings.xml

I don't know because I never manually entered any settings in a file, I only used the graphical user interface to do all the settings and there is no specific option for AAC available.

Well, I cannot reproduce the problem. I have done a fresh install and afterwards the HD audio patch. Now everything works as it should.

Streamerke · 2012-05-20, 08:57

Hi,

I mamaged to distroy XBMC again. What I did was I installed MPC-HC and this program said my Direct X runtime environment was outdated. I installed Direct X manually. Now MPC-HC is working fine but XBMC does not play any movie anymore. It is not bitstreaming anymore and seems to be hanging on the audio. Same problems as before.

You know, I am not a specialist, not by far, but I would like to get more than one program to run fine on my PC.

What do I do to get:
A. An updated Direct X runtime environment
B. XBMC to run fine

DDDamian · 2012-05-20, 18:34

XBMC should run fine with the lastest Direct X - providing it can find it which is an system path set during Direct X's install. Usually Direct X is pretty smart at not installing old files over newer ones - try reinstall XBMC and the DirectX runtime - it may refresh the path and shouldn't overwrite any newer Direct X files.

Streamerke · 2012-05-20, 20:47

You know, as I said I am not an expert but what happened today is beyond belief...

I indeed did try to reinstall the Direct X runtime environment. And immediately after installation everything was fine, even in XBMC all types of audio worked. I shut the PC down a happy man. Then later on when I booted up again the first movie in XBMC worked, a TrueHD one. Then when I tested the next one the display of the receiver said "TrueHD" again. Wrong because that was no TrueHD movie. Also the sound was completely gone. I tried changing some settings but nothing worked. I found out that even in Windows I could no longer produce ANY sound!

Reinstalling XBMC and Direct X, or the other way around did not solve it. I tried many things. To cut the story short, solving this included doing a rollback via System Recovery and reinstalling the Nvidea drivers again, installing K-Lite (yeah yeah I know but at least it works) and then installing XBMC. I spent quite some time.

I have done some testing now and everything seems to be stable, also after rebooting. Man, I don't want to go though that again!

DDDamian · 2012-05-20, 21:16

Be sure to set a new Restore point then Smile

Thebluevoice · 2012-07-03, 23:16

(2012-05-18, 21:05)DDDamian Wrote: You probably have (had) <passthroughaac>true</passthroughaac> in your guisettings.xml

I was having the same prob - AAC was working then stopped recently.

I editted as you suggested and now its working fine again!

I didn't even know of its existance before I read this post.

I also find it a bit worrying that these setting can get changed somehow and can't be fixed from the GUI...

**SikeMo** · 2012-07-10, 19:14

I've just corrected the same issue by turning the AAC passthrough off in guisettings.xml. I guess my receiver can't do the decoding. I am 95% sure this was due to me trying a nightly build and then reverting back to Eden. The nightly must have modified the guisettings.xml file. I suppose that's why we're supposed to back up the relevant xml files before installing nightlies!

Thebluevoice · 2012-07-12, 11:56

(2012-07-10, 19:14)SikeMo Wrote: I've just corrected the same issue by turning the AAC passthrough off in guisettings.xml. I guess my receiver can't do the decoding. I am 95% sure this was due to me trying a nightly build and then reverting back to Eden. The nightly must have modified the guisettings.xml file. I suppose that's why we're supposed to back up the relevant xml files before installing nightlies!

Ah yes that's prob it!