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Hi everyone,
I read somewhere on an XBMC related forum (I cannot remember which one...) that it could be preferable to leave XBMC deal with AC3 and DTS streams rather than passing it through the AV receiver. Can someone explain why, is it correct ?
The only problem I have right now is that the sound levels are much higher when the streams go directly to the receiver. That is to say, AC3/DTS are very loud compared to PCM.
Regards.
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Just a thought on this, what OS are you using to run XBMC on? If its Windows or Ubuntu, is the volume control on the HTPC set high? If it is, the signal being sent to the A/V receiver is going to be louder. If you take the volume control on the HTPC and lower it you may notice the volume go down through your speakers as well. Using the Audio Passthrough, it doesn't matter what the HTPC's volume settings are because it bypasses that portion of the system altogether.
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I am using Openelec 3.0.2 on an Asrock 330 HT. Thank you for information. I guess it's not a problem for the CPU to handle this but I would rather stream the audio directly to the receiver. I will check what the volume is in the mixer and let you know.
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nickr
Retired Team-Kodi Member
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The primary rule is to interfere with the audio as little as possible. Your expensive amplifier should do a better job of conversion to analogue than XBMC or your average sound card can do.
Therefore pass ac3 and dts though to the amplfier if you hardware allows.
If I have helped you or increased your knowledge, click the 'thumbs up' button to give thanks :) (People with less than 20 posts won't see the "thumbs up" button.)
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You are right nickr. I tested and in fact you made me realize that the maximum volume in XBMC and amixer for PCM was the most unmodified stream I can give to the amplifier. By doing this, AC3/DTS streams are at the same sound level than PCM. I should have done this earlier, but I know have to work around the sound modification from the Android app. I will give the pioneer App a try instead.
Thank you.
