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Hey guys, just upgraded both my computers to Frodo last night. Thought everything was fine until I started watching some shows after getting everything set the way I like, and was greeted with an issue I never expected. I was watching a show that had 2 audio streams (1 was AC3 stereo in German, the other was AC3 5.1 in English), so I switched to the English one and instantly the framerate dropped to about 4 FPS and the audio was gone... Switch back to German and everything was normal again. I went into my settings and enabled pass through audio for everything (since my receiver can technically handle them all - I just HATE using passthrough because I then have to use a second remote to control just the volume of everything which can be a pain in the ass). With pass through audio enabled, the issue was gone - I was able to switch audio streams without a noticeable side-effect. There were a few potential causes to my problem that I was thinking, and I'm hoping someone maybe has an idea to send me down the right path (or let me know if I'm completely out to lunch on the cause of my issues entirely). For the record, never had this problem with Dharma or Eden (Well, I guess I sort of did, but it didn't matter if pass through was enabled or not - certain videos, namely youtube videos, would do this from time to time, but that was about the extent of the issue. It seems it's progressed into something bigger now with Frodo).

First, the PC in question is a Intel Q6600 quad-core, with a GT-210 and 4GB RAM. It was originally running XBMC Live 10.1 (on Ubuntu 10.04), I upgraded XBMC last year to Eden and then to Frodo last night (It's still running Ubuntu 10.04). I'm wondering if perhaps either the fact that I'm running 10.04 or the fact that I had to install XBMC from ppa:nathan-renniewaldock/xbmc-stable because 10.04 wasn't officially supported in the main XBMC repository? The main reason I'm still running 10.04 is because I'm afraid to upgrade it to 12.10 due to the fact that every time I've ever tried to upgrade my linux distro on any computer, it's ended in a complete wipe and re-install because it broke so many things that it was easier for me to wipe and re-install with the updated distro than to fix what was broken. I assume this is because of my lack of experience with Linux in general, so if anyone has any pointers they could share with how to do this without losing everything (I've spent countless hours setting up configs for using my PS3 Remote and my iMon LCD on my case that I don't want to re-do )....

Another option I was thinking might be the source of my problems is the nVidia drivers? I haven't updated or touched them since installing XBMC Live (I'm currently using the 195.36.24 drivers from nVidia)... Would updating the drivers be likely to fix this issue? I've been scared to touch the drivers as well, since I've never had good luck when it comes to video drivers in Linux (they always tend to not work for me and require ample fiddling that's often beyond my understanding and I just end up taking shots in the dark until eventually something works haha)...

Lastly, the only other thing I could think of, was before updating, I recall my passthrough and audio out settings all used plughw:x,y statements... Now my only options are "HDA NVidia NVIDIA HDMI" or some other iec958 one for an optical audio (I believe) out that I never use... I don't think this would be the root of the issue, but figured I don't know enough to know exactly what those statements were doing that the "HDA NVidia NVIDIA HDMI" option that was there before wasn't, or why it would affect having XBMC decode these codecs instead of passing them to the receiver to decode...

The other thing - I'm having this same problem on my other computer (Intel Atom D510 [1.66GHz Dual Core], ION Graphics, 2GB DDR2 RAM)... It's not connected to a receiver, only direct to the TV - so I set it to pass through everything, and it works (just like the other XBMC PC), but it makes a terrible sound every time a video starts for a few seconds, and again I have to use 2 remotes - one for the volume on the TV and one for controlling XBMC... I've included my debug log (please let me know if it doesn't have enough information in it, I just quickly enabled debugging this morning, disabled all the pass through audio settings that I had disabled before updating to Frodo, started a video I knew was going to give me the problem, stopped it, re-enabled everything, played it again and that's about it, so if needed I can run through more stuff if it'll help), and if need be, I can provide a copy of my advancedsettings (I've since fixed line 53 too haha), guisettings and so on as well if it'll help.

Help me XBMC Community, you're my only hope (thanks in advance for the help )

XBMC Debug Log Here (This is from my Q6600 build, I didn't think to capture one from my ION build this morning, if it'll help, I can also provide that one as well).

Funnily enough you want the opposite to what most people want, most people want passthrough to work! Perhaps some screenshots of the audio settings that don't work would help. Try pressing prtscr on a keyboard or the record button on a remote to generate a screenshot.

Yeah, I meant to grab one this morning before I left for work, but I forgot that upgrading blewout my keyboard file, so my remote's definitions were all messed up (luckily that's one file I have backed up in like 30 places) haha...

I know it sounds weird, but it's super annoying having to use a second remote just to control the volume of a show, really wish XBMC could magically control pass through audio volume, otherwise I'd probably never have noticed this issue haha (Kids tend to make the receiver remote scarce at times, it's gone missing so long at one point that we chalked it up as gone forever, only to find it in the heater vent like 5 or 6 months later hahaha)

Looking at your log the HDMI device is only capable of LPCM so no Passthrough formats are supported.

Based on the log I'd recommend your settings be:

Audio out: Analog
Speaker configuration: 7.1
Audio output device: HDMI - HDA Nvida

That's kind of what I thought, but am confused to all hell at the fact that it only works when passthrough audio is enabled... Makes no sense to me, but I'll try that out as soon as I get home and see how it goes. Hopefully you nailed it!

(2013-03-12, 23:01)DaMizZa Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah, I meant to grab one this morning before I left for work, but I forgot that upgrading blewout my keyboard file, so my remote's definitions were all messed up (luckily that's one file I have backed up in like 30 places) haha...

I know it sounds weird, but it's super annoying having to use a second remote just to control the volume of a show, really wish XBMC could magically control pass through audio volume, otherwise I'd probably never have noticed this issue haha (Kids tend to make the receiver remote scarce at times, it's gone missing so long at one point that we chalked it up as gone forever, only to find it in the heater vent like 5 or 6 months later hahaha)

well the idea of passthrough is that the htpc passes the bitstream to the amplifier untouched, to preserve quality. If you want to adjust the volume you must decode the bitstream and re-encode it. Defeats the purpose of passthrough.

So I tried setting it to Analog instead of HDMI, same thing, playing video at 4 FPS with no audio at all still ... I took a screenshot of my audio settings screen though... My options for Audio Output Device consist of the following:
"Default (HDA NVidia NVIDIA HDMI"
"HDA NVidia, HDMI"
"HDA Intel, ALC887 Digital S/PDIF"
"HAD Intel, ALC887 Analog"

If I do anything but HDMI (either the default option or the HDA NVidia, HDMI option) I get no audio at all. If I go into the OSD Audio Settings and change the audio output I everything is fine with HDMI or Optical/Coax, but when I change it to Analog I instantly lose audio and video drops to 4 FPS instantly.

Here is my Audio Settings (the only way it works normally configured):




I was really hoping just changing it to Analog would solve my issues.. I still find it strange that it only works with passthrough enabled. I'm starting to think that perhaps the drivers might have something to do with it, but that's honestly just taking a shot in the dark - I have no clue what's causing the problem (or why it is only present in Frodo but not Eden or Dharma for some reason)...

Edit: After checking it out, just out of curiosity, I found my receiver will decode the following codecs: DTS-ES Discrete 6.1, DTS-ES Matrix 6.1, DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS decoder, Dolby TrueHD, DTS Neo:6, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD High Resolution, Dolby Pro Logic IIx, DTS 96/24, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital EX ... Not sure if this covers everything that I can possibly select in the Audio Settings page (I think it covers it, if not most of it... I think), so I assume that's why it works at all?

Also worth asking, is it possibly something with the AudioEngine that's causing my issue? I didn't realize it until just now, but that seems to be the only thing that has changed from when I was using Eden to now... I'm really just taking shots in the dark at this point though...

The thing is according to your log the audio driver does not support passthrough of any of those formats, the log say's the HDMI is capable of LPCM only, although it does say up to 7.1 channels are supported, so something very strange is going on here. It doesn't matter what your receiver supports if the HTPC audio device is not capable of passing formats such as AC3, DTS, TrueHD, DTS-HD etc.

Analog should offer greatest compatibility because in this mode XBMC decodes all formats to LPCM which all systems should be able to handle with the right Speaker Configuration. When you switched to analog what speaker Configuration did you use?

I'm no expert on Linux audio though so maybe someone who is can chip in and help.

Disable DTS-HD, Disable TrueHD, Disable AAC

If it does still not work afterwards.

Disable AC3, disable DTS and see what happens.

(2013-03-13, 12:13)jjd-uk Wrote: [ -> ]The thing is according to your log the audio driver does not support passthrough of any of those formats, the log say's the HDMI is capable of LPCM only, although it does say up to 7.1 channels are supported, so something very strange is going on here. It doesn't matter what your receiver supports if the HTPC audio device is not capable of passing formats such as AC3, DTS, TrueHD, DTS-HD etc.

Analog should offer greatest compatibility because in this mode XBMC decodes all formats to LPCM which all systems should be able to handle with the right Speaker Configuration. When you switched to analog what speaker Configuration did you use?

When I switched to analog I used 5.1 as my speaker configuration .. So is it likely that a new video card would help resolve my issue? Is there a way to offload audio decoding to the CPU instead of the video card, similar to hardware acceleration for video? I have this quad core just sitting there not doing much anyway, so I have no problem having it decode the audio if that's even possible...

(2013-03-13, 12:16)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]Disable DTS-HD, Disable TrueHD, Disable AAC

If it does still not work afterwards.

Disable AC3, disable DTS and see what happens.

Do you mean just disable it in the Audio Settings or is there somewhere else I could be disabling this? When I disable it in the Audio Settings, I just end up with no audio and 4 FPS video, but if there is somewhere else where I could be disabling this, I can give that a try and see if it helps any...

Make sure you see in your skin, what "disable" is and what "enable" means :-) the 4fps is an indicator that you just enabled it.

So are you saying I should set the DTS, AAC, etc Capable Receiver options to disable (false) or enable (true)? When those options are set to enabled (or I guess true), then everything works fine, but I can't control the volume via XBMC. If those options are disabled (or false) then I get no audio and the 4FPS frame rate..

I'm guessing there's a good chance my logic is flawed - but the more I think about it, the more I'm thinking this whole issue I'm having has something to do with AudioEngine being part of XBMC starting with Frodo. The reason I say that is because it's the only thing that's changed (at least from what I can tell). Running Eden, there were no issues regarding not using Passthrough audio, but as soon as I went to Frodo, both my PCs (ION and GT210) give me the 4FPS video with no audio unless I use passthrough audio. While this doesn't work the way I'd like, it still works on the GT210 because it's hooked up to a receiver, this doesn't work at all on my ION PC because it is just hooked up direct to the TV and the TV doesn't support audio decoding of the majority of these codecs, so it's essentially crippled. I'm guessing I might be best to try asking in the AudioEngine thread instead just to see, hopefully they'll be able to confirm if AudioEngine is involved in the issue or not for me...

Don't know if it's worth adding, but I hadn't checked until now - with everything set up so that the shows I had with DTS and all that worked properly, now shows with MP3/Stereo audio are all messed up and play at 4FPS with no audio ... So, out of frustration with this thing, I've opted to just restart everything fresh from Ubuntu 12.10 and see how it works out. I figure I can always go back and re-do all my configs that I'll lose, at least I know how to do those whereas I have no idea what I'm doing with this.

So long story short, I tried minimal installation of Ubuntu 12.04 and tried to go that route, didn't pan out so well. Ended up swallowing what pride I hate left and installing XBMCbuntu and was able to get everything working. Oddly enough, no more audio issues... Actually no issues at all. Everything is as it should be (I really should've just done this from the beginning!)

Thanks for all the help everyone, alls well that ends well!