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2017-05-10, 00:43
(This post was last modified: 2017-05-10, 01:05 by rascas.)
Well I am not the best person to talk about music in Kodi, because I mainly use it for videos, which is great, top quality in my experience, either with RPi or other systems via HDMI.
Using a DAC it may depend on many things. I am not familiar with Volumio either.
Assumming the source is the same, even if the systems are all Linux in the Pi, there might be kernel diferences between them for your DAC driver, kernel tunning for audio latency (Real-time Kernel, for example), it may depend on the audio stack (ALSA, PulseAudio, Jack, etc) you are using, the default equalizations presets, witch should be the same for all Linux systems, but Volumio, since it is a dedicated Linux Audio distribution it might have some modifications, etc.
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I must admit that I was somewhat surprised by how good the old analogue sounded and how poor by comparison Kodi sounded....blamed the DAC initially but after installing and configuring volumio I was much, much happier with the sound - as I said blind testing (switch back and forth between the analogue and the pi on the same track ) showed the improvement for me and my son in la
So why? Done a little digging and volumio is essentially a client to MPD running on raspbian (possibly modded kernel but unclear). So next step is to install MPD on the same raspbian installation that Kodi uses and then try another MPD client ....if that is better than Kodi then I would suggest its how Kodi drives the audio...
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Are you playing exactly the same file on kodi and volumio?
To keep things simple can you reproduce the difference with, say, a wav file?
Are you sure Kodi is using the same volume as volumeio?
Ideally you want kodi volume on 100% for maximum dynamic range. Make sure amplification is off.
It is possible something like replaygain is causing an issue - e.g. pushing kodi into clipping (a wav file should avoid that possibility).
What is the sample rate of file? Are kodi and volumio both driving the audio card at the same sample rate?
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hmmm, lost my last reply....
great call from popcornmix - I had come to the same conclusion but didnt know how to fix it....the suggestion worked a treat: BIG THANKS
So back to testing and trying to find out why volumio sounds so much better on the same h/w and source. I have now installed mpd server on the same pi as kodi and they point at the same sources. I also installed an mpd client (volumio is essentially an mpd server and web based client). comparing mpd against the vinyl......vinyl marginally better. Checked all the setting against volumio.......as close as I can tell the same. So another test against volumio and vinyl......difficult but vinyl just better. So now I am in the position where subjective sound quality is, in descending order
vinyl,
volumio DAC
raspbian mpd DAC
raspbian kodi DAC.
volume DOES play a part - levels for volumio/DAC and vinyl are about the same, raspbian mpd/DAC is slightly lower than vinyl, Kodi/DAC is quite a bit down.
As far as I can see there is no volume control on the DAC....
a little more laying is required.
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Listen to Popcornmix. 100%
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2017-05-15, 23:33
(This post was last modified: 2017-05-15, 23:57 by rascas.)
Do you have PulseAudio installed on Raspbian ?
In alsamixer, do they have equal volume level in Volumio and Raspbian ?
Can you post a full Kodi log with debug enabled while playing the audio files through the DAC ?
??
tring&): Assertion `0' failed.] stopping mpd doesnt fix it........oh bother]
