[Wokun]

Hi I'm new to this forum. I came here because of a bug I came across in the new Plex Home Theatre, which I upgraded to today. On the plex forum they suggested to try XBMC Frodo to see if the problem was still there and well, it is. So I decided to post the bug here instead of the Plex forum.

Let me explain my setup. I have a MacBook Pro with the latest Mountain Lion version. Connected to that through firewire is a Motu Traveler, which is a really awesome sounding multichannel I/O device (24bit/192kHz). I use that to connect it to my Onkyo TX-NR808 on the 8 channel analog input. Because my speaker setup is only 5.1 I only connected the first 6 analog channels, which I configured to Multichannel 5.1 surround using the Mac OSX Audio MIDI setup. I use this setup for my videobusiness, when I need to record and mix in 5.1 in Logic Pro, which just works (just verrified).

VLC plays mkv's with 5.1 AC3 or DTS perfectly. But when I play the exact same files in XBMC (tested 12.2 and 13 alpha6), I only hear just the surround-channels playing on the speakers of channels 1+6 (main-left and right-surround) and can hear gui sounds on the speakers of channels 1+2 (main-left+main-right). When I play a 2.0 file I only hear the Main-left speaker.

I tried every kind of combination possible in de Audio settings. To my understanding the settings should be:
Audio Output: Analog
Speaker Configuration 5.1
Audio Output device: either MOTU Traveler or Default Output Device

In Plex there is an option to show some streaming-info while playing the file. There I could see that the audio was "5.1 (side)", which is what I'm hearing (in the wrong channels).

I hope this is enough information and hope it can help to fix this bug.
Thank you!

Edit: Just tried XBMC 11.0 and there it just works and I have perfect 5.1 audio, again with the same files. Maybe that helps narrowing it down?

[Memphiz]

Does that thing decode ac3 and dts? If so try:

Output HDMI (or optical)
speaker setup 2.0 (just do it ...)
ac3 capable receiver - checked
dts capable receiver - checked
LPCM - uncecked(!!)

Might help ...

[Wokun]

No it's just a simple audio interface and just uses the Apple Core Audio settings from either stereo or multichannel. The DTS/Dolby decoding is done on the mac and after that it's just 6 audio channels that are passed through to the amp. This resulted in much better audio quality than using the Macs digital output (probably because it has one of the best D/A converters I've ever heard). Like I said, the way I configured the device is how apple expects a multichannel device to be configured for CoreAudio. At least, it has to be since it works as it's supposed to with Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro X.

I tried your settings anyway (you never know).
But it didn't work. I just got static on both a DTS and a Dolby signal. I tried both HDMI and optical settings and changed to 2.0 as you said. Although I don't quite understand logic behind changing to HDMI/optical instead of analog, I do understand why 2.0.

Because of the change to 2.0 I also tried changing the audio input on the Onkyo amp from direct multichannel to analog, but it got roughly the same result (Got static matrixed in Prologic IIz).

[Memphiz]

Ok ... in that case (i didn't know that kind of device) you are facing the channelmapping problem we are having since frodo 12.1 ... you could try if frodo 12.0 works for you but i can assure you that audio engine on osx is busted when it comes to something like > 2 channels without passthrough ...