[wpbpete]

Hello, thanks to all involved with XBMC, everything runs great. I'm running
Beta 2 on my Win7 64 with i5 cpu with hdmi
htpc > avr (SC1522K) > tv.

Forgive my ADHD but I don't get what these two settings are supposed to do and how to use them, hopefully someone can give me a better understanding...
Output Configuration:
Fixed?
Optimized?
Best match?
and
Keep Audio Device Alive:
Always?
Off?

[jjd-uk]

Read the Help information at the bottom, that's why the descriptions were put there for Gotham, unless there's something about them you don't understand.

At the most basic level:

Output Configuration governs how audio properties are handled during playback of a number of items.

Keep Audio Device Alive controls what happens when nothing if being played.

[Martijn]

Remember to switch to a Gotham supported skin which has the descriptions.
Best is that you don't touch it at all unless you know what you are doing

[wpbpete]

Read the Help information at the bottom, that's why the descriptions were put there for Gotham, unless there's something about them you don't understand.

At the most basic level:

Output Configuration governs how audio properties are handled during playback of a number of items.

Keep Audio Device Alive controls what happens when nothing if being played.

Thanks for the replies. I'm using SpaceMonkey's Confluence Modified, it shows the descriptions. Here's how I interpret them, please correct me where I'm wrong...
Fixed = whatever I set my audio config to, will not be changed by XBMC regardless of the source material
Best Match = XBMC will play the source material with no/little alterations, so you hear it as it was recorded
Optimized = If I change the source material XBMC will play the next source with the same properties as the previous one regardless of quality
lol I'm sure i got it all screwed up, but assuming I got some of it, are any of these supposed to change the Audio Output Device and Passthrough Device?

And with Keep Device Alive, is that so that when I switch source material XBMC will playback the new source sound immediately or delay it?

[jjd-uk]

You've basically understood it right for the Output Configuration.

Keep Device Alive is for when connected to devices that are slow to respond to a new audio stream.

With this turned off and when nothing is playing (including gui sounds if enabled) then audio is suspended in XBMC and the audio device is released which is useful if you do other things with the PC. When you then start navigating (if gui sounds are enabled) or start playback of something then XBMC re-initialises the audio device and then starts to send audio again, however some devices, particularly oder HDMI AVR's, can be slow to respond so the start of the audio maybe missed.

The time setting is to allow the user to specify the time XBMC waits from the last audio packet from either gui sounds or playback before suspending audio and releasing the device.

With this set to Always then XBMC is constantly sending something, so if no gui sounds or nothing is being played then a low level noise is sent so the AVR or whatever device so it constantly receives data, thus when navigation or playback starts again nothing will be missed. Note - this noise is designed to be beyond human perception so you won't know it's there.

[wpbpete]

Thanks, now it makes sense. Output Configuration sounds like something that will improve playback of various music formats and that's a good thing.
Can you answer the other question above--- " are any of these supposed to change the Audio Output Device and Passthrough Device?"----
The reason I ask is, my preferred config is:
Output Device = Directsound hdmi- SC1522
Passthrough Device = Wasapi hdmi- SC1522
But sometimes it changes by itself and I don't know why. So if one of those options is causing this behavior I can control it better

[jjd-uk]

The only time in my experience the audio output device setting will change, is if HDMI is used and XBMC is started before the HDMI is available.

With HDMI the connection must be made and the connected device (TV/AVR) switched on before XBMC is started as the available devices is only checked at start up, if the HDMI link isn't active then it's marked as unplugged by the OS so XBMC skips it.

[wpbpete]

It is strange that it does that considering the avr is on standby and always available to the os. It might be that the avr has some HDMI issues, it behaves strangely sometimes. Luckily its not really a problem more of a wtf?? LoL thanks for the info, I appreciate it.

[jjd-uk]

The AVR being in standby will indeed cause a problem, it needs to be on before XBMC is started.

[wpbpete]

I've been slowly learning more about the new sound features (The above is solved) but one issue that I've had on the backburner is that, when I play DTS with the receiver in standby mode, there's no sound on the tv. Figuring it's a tv decoding issue, I've left it alone, but playing around with the settings I found that by unticking Enable Passthrough, I'm able to get sound from the tv, so two questions. 1) Is it XBMC or Windows decoding? 2) Why doesn't XBMC switch itself? The "user friendly" aspect is seriously diminished by this.
Will this be a solution? http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1633957

[jjd-uk]

With passthrough off XBMC is doing the decoding to PCM as your TV won't support decoding of DTS.

Recent changes will help with this but will still likely need your settings to cater for the lowest common denominator device, in your case the TV, however I've not had chance to have a proper play.

[wpbpete]

Thanks jjd-uk,
as always, I appreciate you taking the time to help educate me on these things.
I hope that these settings become a little more "user friendly" ie: automated in the beta version. I just don't see my wife and kids making these individual changes whenever they want to watch a movie LoL