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Actually when it comes to the # of speakers, I've found that the best way to do it is simply let my receiver handle the downmixing. I THINK that most modern receivers are able to downmix - say - 7.1 to <whatever is connected>

I had similar problems to yours when I tried to tell XBMC that I had a 4.0 setup, but just pretending I have a center and subwoofer and letting the receiver handle the rest seemed to be a sure-fire way to get things to be downmixed properly.

I had, literally, 5 minutes this morning to play around with this stuff and well Im afraid I didn't get it to work. Need to spend a little more time on this to get back into the tweaking mode.. can someone remind me: how do I check if an asound.conf is found, read properly? My problem this morning (again.. 5 minutes..) was that it simply didn't have a new 'virtual' audio device, so it seemed like it simply hasn't read in asound.conf or there was a parse error.

I seem to recall aplay does give some feedback on the proper-ness of asound.conf...
Anyway, nice progress, more later!

I haven't tested this as an asound.conf as my initial tests in that configuration failed. This is an asoundrc config that should be located in your home directory (~/.asoundrc), that way it will be read every time you try to play a sound and can be edited on the fly. Place the file in the correct location and restart XBMC and you should be good to go.

speaker-test is useful for this.

Interesting. With some minor snags I think I've got it to work.... better than I thought?

One setup I never considered is to _always_ let my audiophile DAC take care of the front speakers, rather than have an "audiophile mode" where I manually switch to the stereo path. (primary reason is the theory that there would be different delays, which likely is true but I'm not really noticing it yet..)

But the first thing that happened when I got everything lined up properly was basically fronts producing, well, front through my DAC, and rears going through my fine-but-nothing-special receiver.

The only snag is that center is way under-amplified. Subwoofer too, I suspect.
I think we're very near switching this topic to 'SOLVED' guys, but the key issue that I had before was stuttering, blips (cracks) in the stream etc. Need to watch a movie or two to see if they manifest.

More experimenting to come.

(2013-05-09, 02:18)puntloos Wrote: [ -> ]But the first thing that happened when I got everything lined up properly was basically fronts producing, well, front through my DAC, and rears going through my fine-but-nothing-special receiver.

The only snag is that center is way under-amplified. Subwoofer too, I suspect.
I think we're very near switching this topic to 'SOLVED' guys.

More experimenting to come.

I had to turn my receiver to 'Direct' to remove all the extra stuff it was doing in order to test if my asoundrc was working correctly. I was then able to confirm that XBMC was handling 4.0 and 5.1 (and the other configurations) correctly. As soon as I had the receiver on anything else my results were all over the place as the receiver tried to up-mix and down-mix. I would try that to confirm you are set up correctly first. FWIW, I have been switching between this config (mixed) and the straight HDMI setting in XBMC and there is no change in the quality of the sound (or center and sub volumes) for better or worse.

(2013-05-09, 02:27)omobeanz Wrote: [ -> ]I had to turn my receiver to 'Direct' to remove all the extra stuff it was doing in order to test if my asoundrc was working correctly. I was then able to confirm that XBMC was handling 4.0 and 5,1 (and the other configurations correctly).

Indeed, my center+sub problem disappeared when I told XBMC I had 4.0. Previously this was actually the inverse and would result in me losing center. Fun

Quote:As soon as I had the receiver on anything else my results were all over the place as the receiver tried to up-mix and down-mix. I would try that to confirm you are set up correctly first. FWIW, I have been switching between this config (mixed) and the straight HDMI setting in XBMC and there is no change in the quality of the sound (or center and sub volumes) for better or worse.

Well psychology Post Purchase Rationalization has already kicked in and my $4000 DAC sounds a lot better than my $1000 surround receiver.

Now stress-testing and tinkering a bit.. but for now things are pretty good.....

Thank you guys for all this superb work. Just one question to omobeanz: your using "rate 48000" in the config file. As a result the signal is resampled to 48000 kHz for both HDMI als the DAC isn it?

I'm pretty sure you can remove the 'rate 480000' entries. Give it a try?

I would like to. However, my current DAC has no display and therefore cannot tell me the bitrate XBMC / Openelec is sending. 2 weeks ago I tested the config of hannesb in the local audio store with my potential new DAC. In case of the config of HannesB and using an AMD APU the signal was resampled to 48000 Hz without even defining rate 48000.

(2013-05-13, 21:02)Hawaltie Wrote: [ -> ]I would like to. However, my current DAC has no display and therefore cannot tell me the bitrate XBMC / Openelec is sending. 2 weeks ago I tested the config of hannesb in the local audio store with my potential new DAC. In case of the config of HannesB and using an AMD APU the signal was resampled to 48000 Hz without even defining rate 48000.

But you narrowed that down to a hardware choice right? It's good to know but nothing XBMC would have control over anyway.

It seems to me that you would never want to resample UNLESS you are dealing with a DAC that can't handle a certain (high) rate. In all other cases forcing resampling is Bad™

Ideally, I would suggest, you would want to have XBMC provide some option "downsample if higher than X' only.

confirmed - removing 48000 works

(2013-05-13, 22:42)puntloos Wrote: [ -> ]confirmed - removing 48000 works

Thanks for testing puntloos! I can confirm it works for me too after removing that. To be honest I can't remember why I added that, I must have picked up that setting off the web somewhere...

I have a new odd issue with this set up though. Sometimes the background soundtrack seems a bit stressed, in other words, kind of like a stretched tape if that makes sense. The foreground music and voice is fine, it's just the background for some reason. I noticed it during the intro to Game of Thrones. When I returned the audio setting to digital over HDMI the issue stopped. I wonder what that might be from?

(2013-05-16, 04:37)omobeanz Wrote: [ -> ]

(2013-05-13, 22:42)puntloos Wrote: [ -> ]confirmed - removing 48000 works

Thanks for testing puntloos! I can confirm it works for me too after removing that. To be honest I can't remember why I added that, I must have picked up that setting off the web somewhere...

I have a new odd issue with this set up though. Sometimes the background soundtrack seems a bit stressed, in other words, kind of like a stretched tape if that makes sense. The foreground music and voice is fine, it's just the background for some reason. I noticed it during the intro to Game of Thrones. When I returned the audio setting to digital over HDMI the issue stopped. I wonder what that might be from?

Depends on when it happens.

One thing that I want to change with my setup but haven't had time (which blocks me from actually posting my final config) is something that might be affecting you too, and I know how to fix it (for me) - although I did not notice the effect you describe.

The problem is that the stereo channel currently is the 'sum of all channels' - meaning that indeed sound that is 100% rear also comes through my front speakers.
Perhaps this is what someone might want who wants to watch a movie on a stereo system, but in MY case I have different needs. My intended setup (or one of them, at least) will only send front left, center and front-right to the stereo channel. The trouble though is that with mixing multiple channels (especially 5.1 or 7.1) into two means you could go over the channel's limit. You need to pre-amplify (or rather attenuate) the channels before mixing, else you might run into clipping IF the mix is already pretty loud, which is common for TV shows and uncommon for movies.

This is why Matthias T for example used this mixing matrix:

Suggest you try something like this and report back =)

After a little fiddling I've got it working: stereo output to my amplifier and also audio over HDMI to my television, thanks to omobeanz' setup. Very nice work, been looking for this a long time.

On another note, has anyone figured out how XBMC decides on the names for the audio output device in Settings -> System -> Audio ?
I'd love it to actually be more descriptive than "Default". (Dual-Audio sounds good...)

Has anyone got this working for openelec?

I want to do bistream to HDMI and audio to analog. I dont care if it doesnt work with bitsreamed content, I only want it to work with 2 channell stereo.