[flobbes]

My Xbmc worked fine for some time, now suddenly it doesnt play any non-digital audio anymore (video and mp3).
Videos with ac3 are no problem.

The Media Center is connected via toslink/optical cable.

Can't remember to have changed anything of my configuration.

My system is running:
Linux xbmc 2.6.28-15-generic #49-Ubuntu SMP Tue Aug 18 18:40:08 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

Another strange thing is I cant check my xbmc revision which only states: unknown
Im getting it via apt-get from the ppa.

Here a logfile where I tried to play a video which didn't output any sound:

http://pastebin.com/m5ae6a023

[flobbes]

2 hours ago there was a upgrade and I updated to r23164 but it didnt fix my issue.

I was able to output mp3 sound with:
$ mplayer -ao alsa:device=spdif temp/test.mp3

Anybody got an idea what could be the problem?

[PharaohsPaw]

I'm having same problem since at least r23301. I thought at first that the problem was a new video file having a bad audio stream, but since then I've checked other video files in my library that I know worked fine and they also have no audio playback now.

Have not changed my system configuration (Fedora 10 x86) other than applying updates from time to time. I can go back to one of my older builds (like around 19575) and basically any audio format in music or video player is fine. However with more recent builds (23301, 23582 today) neither flac nor mp3 audio types will play back in either the music player or video player:

I've seen some reference made to an ffmpeg update causing probs for other folks (wma/wmv), maybe it's related. I dunno.

I can play videos that have ac3 and dts streams just fine, though.

I am about to try a build using external (system) libraries for as much as I can and see if it makes any difference.

Also getting ready to post the RPM spec file I use so folks can tear it to pieces... (heh). But that will be in its own thread.

cheers,
PharaohsPaw

[PharaohsPaw]

ok trying to build with external libs was a train wreck. Scratch that.

[thommie]

I had the same problem and reinstalled linux. But after reading on some forums I found out that I could write "iecset audio 1" in the terminal and the audio worked again.
I have no idea what the command means, but it worked for me.

[PharaohsPaw]

Hi Thommie,

Thanks for the reply. I took a look at the iecset man page and it looks like iecset is used to set or query various parameters and modes of the SPDIF output.

According to this, running 'iecset audio 1' would set the SPDIF to audio (vs. non-audio) mode.

Code:

COMMANDS
...
       audio <bool>
              The audio mode (true) or non-audio mode (false).

Interesting, that. Maybe that bit got set the other way somehow.

I did some more twiddling around yesterday. As it turns out, the "problem" that I thought got fixed in newer revisions where some types of audio don't start up right away, but takes a few seconds and then the video slows down until they sync up -- actually still happens even with svn rev 23582 (current as of early yesterday).

It may even depend how/when xbmc is started up whether this delayed audio and the lack of output for mp3 and other audio types occurs or not. At one point yesterday I had the latest svn build outputting mp3 and flac audio types again, but the delayed audio stream start with these audio types was back. I had removed the KDE Autostart entry to launch xbmc on login, started a new X session, and started it manually afterwards. I decided that was better than no mp3 and flac audio at all. Just need to figure out now what exactly happened.

I am starting to wonder if maybe it is something to do with how exactly the X session, or xbmc, is getting started. For example, maybe xbmc is starting up so early that the audio hardware wasn't quite ready yet. Or maybe a problem with my setup.

Cheers,
PharaohsPaw

[PharaohsPaw]

OK so for me, I don't seem to have any more problems with non-AC3/DTS audio output after:

1) switching away from KDE as desktop enviro on the HTPC rig (KDE doesn't make much sense anyway, too heavyweight of a desktop for a dedicated HTPC machine). I've used both XFCE and Fluxbox successfully.

2) changing Audio Output Device (Settings\System\Audio Hardware) from default to iec958

3) making sure I don't start xbmc with the -f (fullscreen) cmdline option. No idea why this matters but it definitely seems to. I just dropped a script into XFCE's automatic start list that simply runs "xbmc &".

[dm71]

Thanks for the tip PP. Doing your step #2 was enough to fix this for me.

[PharaohsPaw]

Cool! I'd seen somebody mention that somewhere here on the forums.

PharaohsPaw

[mojo6911]

This happened to me running Ubuntu Jaunty with the standard Gnome desktop. I originally thought it had something to do with pulse audio, so I removed it and it worked for a few days and then did it again. The sound also doesn't work outside of XBMC, so it is definitely a problem with the OS. I just blew it up and reinstalled the minimal version to see what happens.