[SchroedingersCat]

Using Ubuntu 16.04 and Kodi 15.1, it seems impossible to have upmixing stereo source disabled while still being able to downmix 7.1 sources or mislabeled 5.1 surround channels.

The Wiki about this matter is misleading:
http://kodi.wiki/view/PulseAudio#Known_issues
(This will also forbid PA to remix e.g. FL,FR, LFE, FC, BL, BR into FL, FR, LFE, FC, SL, SR - which means you might loose your rears if your speaker layout is non standard.)

However, the standard gnome video player and the vlc are both able to correctly downmix any audio source out of the box. To me, it looks like falsly blaming PulseAudio.
In the end, Kodi-users on Linux just don't get the intended experiences, because either all stereo content is mixed up blurriyng the original artists intention or the content cannot be adapted to their current listening setup.

My current workaround is to use vlc as an external player. But I think this should be improved!

[fritsch]

Patches welcome.

In more Detail: if you set kodi output 2.0 kodi exactly opens 2 channels.
If you set 5.1 kodi uses 6 channels. You can easily see this with pavucontrol. Even the speaker mapping is 1:1.

The rest is done by pulseaudio between Input and output without us asking pa to do so.

What's wrong with the wiki? You blame us for not adding additional extra silence channels?

[fritsch]

Here a workaround: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/p...06907.html

If you don't like pa's default behavior, ask on their ml.

[fritsch]

And here is a code workaround, so that poor AE needs to send silence channels: http://sprunge.us/MVDY ... sorry wirting workaround code for a soundserver that is exactly designed to remix whatever user expects is nothing an application should do, cause this drives the soundserver "throw everything on me I cope with it" nuts.