Kodi Community Forum

I have a Mi Box 3 with Kodi. When playing 5.1 AAC files there, it transcodes it to 5.1 DD and passes-through to my sound system.
I just got the Shield. With the same sound system and same files, it doesn't transcode 5.1 AAC to DD. It just outputs regular stereo to my sound system.

I tried asking for help in Shield forums, but they said that AAC to DD transcoding is done by Kodi itself, therefore it's a Kodi issue.

I have all the same configuration under Settings -> System -> Audio. Passthrough enabled. Even checked during video playback under Audio settings that passthrough is enabled.
I should add that DD files and DTS files all work fine and pass-through to the sound system

Please help, or at least tell me if there is anything wrong in my question

Thank you

Why?

There is absolutely no reason to output 5.1 ACC as AC3 when the box can output multichannel PCM.

If you transcode to AC3, this will happen:

1) Decode ACC to Float
2) Encode Float to AC3 5.1 -> loss of quality

If you really want to degrade audio quality like that. Set "Number of speakers" to 2.0 and enable Dolby Transcoding - then kodi things you have a broken multi channel configuration and will encode all multi channel that cannot be passthroughed directly to AC3.

(2018-12-31, 18:37)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]Why?

Cause right now my Shield sends 2 channel stereo to the sound system when playing 5.1 AAC.
My amp has no HDMI input (only coax, direct and SPDIF). My current configuration is MiBox/Shield HDMI -> HDMI ARC Switch (that presents itself as 5.1 capable device) -> Optical SPDIF to Sound System (and TV gets HDMI from the HDMI Switch). As far as I know, Optical SPDIF doesn't support more than 2.0 PCM, but it can do DD and DTS passthrough.

 

(2018-12-31, 18:37)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]If you really want to degrade audio quality like that. Set "Number of speakers" to 2.0 and enable Dolby Transcoding - then kodi things you have a broken multi channel configuration and will encode all multi channel that cannot be passthroughed directly to AC3.

I will try that. I've had that configured for 2.0, but maybe I had another Shield setting wrong at that time (it has "Surround Sound" as "always, auto, never" setting). 

Thank you

Ah - thanks for the SPDIF information - I could not smell that one :-)

Yes - 2 PCM channels and therefore only virtual formats DTS , AC3 and with a bit of luck (AVR understands 192 khz, even EAC3).

For Kodi:
Set Channels to 2.0
Enable AC3, DTS and enable Dolby Transcoding.

(2018-12-31, 18:54)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]Ah - thanks for the SPDIF information - I could not smell that one :-)

Yes - 2 PCM channels and therefore only virtual formats DTS , AC3 and with a bit of luck (AVR understands 192 khz, even EAC3).

For Kodi:
Set Channels to 2.0
Enable AC3, DTS and enable Dolby Transcoding.

Just came back to say that did the trick! Thank you. Spent 3 days on this