Kodi Community Forum

ATV 2.3.1, Launcher 3.0, XBMC 9.04 Beta 1

Trying to get surround sound working with XBMC. I use an s/pdif optical connection to a Sony Receiver STRDE595.

As test case (a), I am using a DVD (Lord of the Rings 1) converted for iTunes with the standard Handbrake ATV setting. There are two audio tracks, one stereo, one surround sound. This movie plays with no issue in Frontrow (streaming from iTunes with surround sound) but I cannot get surround sound using XBMC.

1. Audio output set to Digital, AC3, DTS capable. No downmix to stereo

2. Movie plays fine using the stereo track.

3. Switching to AC3, silence from the Receiver and clicking from the analog audio output

Test Case (b) is odder. I play a movie with AC3-only soundtrack.

1. No audio from the digital output, clicking from the analog

2. Switching audio output to Analog, movie plays approx twice normal speed.

I have pasted a logfile at http://pastebin.ca/1403825

This problem appears to be the same as one I reported for 9.04alpha 1 http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=49231


Niall

In test cases (a) and (b), the clicking from the analog output would imply that OSX is incorrectly identifying the audio data as standard PCM. One thing to check is that the volume in XBMC is at 100%. If it is not, the AC3 header data will be mangled, and will not be detected properly. The 2x video playback in case (b) is due to the fact that we sync our video to the audio stream. since the audio data is being handled incorrectly, it is being consumed more quickly and the video data has to jump ahead to keep up.

We are attempting to address this with a complete replacement of the portaudio code in xbmc. While this new audio code will not make it into the Babylon release, it will be merged into the main codebase very shortly. If you are interested in being a tester, please PM me and I will let you know when we are ready.