Posts: 1,197
Joined: Apr 2010
Reputation:
82
CrystalP
Team-Kodi Developer
Posts: 1,197
Does the same thing happen with AC3 soundtracks of different bit rates and channel count?
For example the commentary 2.0 track, a 5.1 downsampled to 384kbps, a 5.1 640kbps converted from Bluray?
Posts: 19
Joined: Nov 2010
Reputation:
0
Thnx CrystalP. I'll check tonight. I've also only tried this by playing VIDEO_TS.IFO files. I'll try playing tonight using a DVD disk (should be the same though) and also try mkv and divx content of varying bitrates and channel count.
Posts: 89
Joined: Dec 2010
Reputation:
1
it might not be the same but I have some "failed to inizialize audio device"
It does that on certain movies only and my HDMI output is Intel HD graphic, working on a Asrock Core 100-HT.
Posts: 1,197
Joined: Apr 2010
Reputation:
82
CrystalP
Team-Kodi Developer
Posts: 1,197
Does boxee play the same files correctly?
DirectSound vs Wasapi makes a difference?
slizzap, you have no loss of quality. AC3 decoding is bitperfect and hdmi/wasapi is bitperfect too. The only thing you lose is the pretty Dolby light on the receiver.
If the receiver applies additional processing, that's another story.
Posts: 163
Joined: Feb 2004
Reputation:
0
Forgive my possible ignorance here, but is there a guide to getting AC3/DTS passthrough working properly with XBMC? Are there supposed to be any special steps? Any required plugins/codecs/software of any sort?
I purchased an ATI Radeon HD 5670 and did a complete rebuild of my HTPC last night. I did nothing other than install all the drivers for my hardware, do a few tweaks to Windows (7 x32), install the latest ATI drivers, verify sound was working (note: did *not* use Realtek ATI HDMI driver), and then install/configure XBMC. Didn't install any codec packs at all. I was hoping a clean start with new hardware might do me some good.
After XBMC was installed, I configured the audio output to use HDMI with 5.1 speakers. Music sounds beautiful, as do WMVs with WMAPro. When I have AC3 and DTS compatible receiver options checked, my MKVs with DD and DTS have no audio. My receiver switches to "Stereo" and acts like there's no input. If I disable the AC3/DTS options, I get sound but it appears to be sent as PCM. I didn't test TOO much here because it was getting late, but the channels sounded correct but I could've swore I heard *some* dialog coming out of the rear channels, which I don't think is correct. But I need to check that versus my dedicated DVD player. I'll be doing some more testing tonight. In any ase, it's not bitstreaming.
I've spent the past couple days doing some searching around these forums as well as avsforum.com. I never completely rule out that it's a problem on my end versus a bug in the software, so I just wanted to see if I was missing something obvious. I haven't really seen any guides on this forum or in the wiki, which leads me to believe there should be nothing special about this.
TIA.
Posts: 23
Joined: Nov 2010
Reputation:
0
XBMC uses its own codecs, so it doesn't require any codec packs installed. All it requires is DirectX, which it installs during setup if it doesn't find it previously installed. I don't think it makes any difference to XBMC if a codec pack is installed on the system or not, but I've never looked too deeply into that. But you'll need to install codecs if you want to play the video files in other players...
Posts: 163
Joined: Feb 2004
Reputation:
0
Yeah, that was what first prompted this. I had my HTPC working with audio/video working properly within Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center, but some audio just didn't work within XBMC. I've been using XBMC on the original Xbox since it's inception, and I still have one in my living room that I use mainly for music. I'm actually getting rid of it now that I have XBMC in Windows working properly (for music, anyways), and it would great to use it as my full time frontend and replace WMC. I used to follow XBMC on the Xbox, but I'm pretty far removed from the Windows version. Just needed to be sure if I just wasn't configuring something properly on my end.
I think I'll have to start working with the codecs again so I can use WMP/WMC as a backup while this gets sorted out.