2015-02-11, 21:21
Not sure if the guys that were posting about the 2 channel audio issues are still looking at this thread since it's 6+ months old, but I figured this out last week when upgrading to Win7 and Helix from an old WinXP/Frodo install:
Any of the onboard ATI/AMD GPU's that are in the 780G, 785G, 790G or 890G chipsets (that includes HD3200, HD3300, HD4000, HD4200, HD4250, HD4290, etc) support *only* 2 channel PCM over the HDMI link, or DD5.1 or DTS5.1 standard compressed formats. It is the GPU that is the limiting factor, there is no way around it, AMD did not include the silicon to support 8 channel PCM or any of the higher bitrate lossless (but still compressed) formats.
So you will never see 8 channel or DTS-MA, TrueHD, etc on any of these GPU's, even if you are connected directly to a new fully-featured AVR. If you want those formats you need to get a stand-alone GPU that is based on at least the Radeon 5450 or higher variants.
Essentially AMD opted to basically just replicate the SPDIF functionality in the onboard GPU's which has exactly the same limitations (2 channel PCM max, or 5.1 DD/DTS).
You can see the following for more info, or just google for "AMD 780G PCM" and you will find numerous discussions explaining this in more detail.
http://anandtech.com/show/3563
Now, here are some details to improve your situation as best you can if you choose to continue using the onbard GPU:
1) You can bitstream standard DD and DTS 5.1 from Kodi by enabling passthrough in the audio settings screen, and selecting the 2 options for AC3 and DTS capable receiver. Then Kodi should send those regardless of what the Windows audio device page shows you, and regardless of what you have your audio channel settings configured to, because both of those compressed formats fit within the uncompressed PCM 2.0 bandwidth available.
2) If you have set your channels to 5.1 or 7.1 on that screen, because the system only reports you have 2.0 channels of *PCM* capacity, Kodi will decode your 5.1/7.1 DTS-MA/TrueHD/Atmos to 2.0 channel PCM and send that over the HDMI link (again, because the HD lossless audio data won't fit into the bandwidth available on the AMD HDMI link for the onboard GPU's)
3) If you want to get multi-channel from those lossless formats when using the onboard AMD GPU's, you *must* set your channel configuration to 2.0, in which case the option for Dolby Digital Transcoding will magically appear under the AC3 Capable Receiver setting. If you enable that, then any multi-channel sources other than standard DD and DTS (IE, TrueHD, Atmos, WMAPro5.1, AAC5.1) will be decoded by Kodi, and transcoded to standard DD5.1, and then bitstreamed to your AVR, which will see it as a 640kbps standard DD stream and it will decode it and play correctly as multi-channel instead of simple stereo when these settings are not enabled... With the exception of the HD DTS formats, for those Kodi will extract the DTS Core 5.1 @ 1536 kbps and send that instead of reencoding it, since DTS was nice enough to include a higher quality fallback format within their HD audio specifications.
I'm afraid that is the best you can do if you use an onboard AMD GPU. Like I said, if you want 7.1 lossless over HDMI, the only way to get it with AMD is to get a stand-alone video card that has HDMI on it greater than the 5450 series.
Cheers
TRJB
Any of the onboard ATI/AMD GPU's that are in the 780G, 785G, 790G or 890G chipsets (that includes HD3200, HD3300, HD4000, HD4200, HD4250, HD4290, etc) support *only* 2 channel PCM over the HDMI link, or DD5.1 or DTS5.1 standard compressed formats. It is the GPU that is the limiting factor, there is no way around it, AMD did not include the silicon to support 8 channel PCM or any of the higher bitrate lossless (but still compressed) formats.
So you will never see 8 channel or DTS-MA, TrueHD, etc on any of these GPU's, even if you are connected directly to a new fully-featured AVR. If you want those formats you need to get a stand-alone GPU that is based on at least the Radeon 5450 or higher variants.
Essentially AMD opted to basically just replicate the SPDIF functionality in the onboard GPU's which has exactly the same limitations (2 channel PCM max, or 5.1 DD/DTS).
You can see the following for more info, or just google for "AMD 780G PCM" and you will find numerous discussions explaining this in more detail.
http://anandtech.com/show/3563
Now, here are some details to improve your situation as best you can if you choose to continue using the onbard GPU:
1) You can bitstream standard DD and DTS 5.1 from Kodi by enabling passthrough in the audio settings screen, and selecting the 2 options for AC3 and DTS capable receiver. Then Kodi should send those regardless of what the Windows audio device page shows you, and regardless of what you have your audio channel settings configured to, because both of those compressed formats fit within the uncompressed PCM 2.0 bandwidth available.
2) If you have set your channels to 5.1 or 7.1 on that screen, because the system only reports you have 2.0 channels of *PCM* capacity, Kodi will decode your 5.1/7.1 DTS-MA/TrueHD/Atmos to 2.0 channel PCM and send that over the HDMI link (again, because the HD lossless audio data won't fit into the bandwidth available on the AMD HDMI link for the onboard GPU's)
3) If you want to get multi-channel from those lossless formats when using the onboard AMD GPU's, you *must* set your channel configuration to 2.0, in which case the option for Dolby Digital Transcoding will magically appear under the AC3 Capable Receiver setting. If you enable that, then any multi-channel sources other than standard DD and DTS (IE, TrueHD, Atmos, WMAPro5.1, AAC5.1) will be decoded by Kodi, and transcoded to standard DD5.1, and then bitstreamed to your AVR, which will see it as a 640kbps standard DD stream and it will decode it and play correctly as multi-channel instead of simple stereo when these settings are not enabled... With the exception of the HD DTS formats, for those Kodi will extract the DTS Core 5.1 @ 1536 kbps and send that instead of reencoding it, since DTS was nice enough to include a higher quality fallback format within their HD audio specifications.
I'm afraid that is the best you can do if you use an onboard AMD GPU. Like I said, if you want 7.1 lossless over HDMI, the only way to get it with AMD is to get a stand-alone video card that has HDMI on it greater than the 5450 series.
Cheers
TRJB
