2016-08-31, 08:51
I'm experimenting with using only Alsa with Alsaequal and Preamp on an Ubuntu 16.04 HTPC installation, the idea being to strip out as much 'unnecessary' stuff (ie pulseaudio), but retaining as much audio fidelity and control as possible.
I've discovered that setting 'keep audio device alive' to anything other than 'Never' causes a blast of hiss/static to be output to speakers during times when the audio device is not being used. This seems to be an issue with my alsa setup and the audio signal output by Kodi in order to keep the audio device alive.
Setting 'keep audio device alive' to Never solves the issue for the most part - audio is clear and crisp, and balanced the way I want it, and the audio device responds readily. However, I find that the issue happens with streaming video whenever the video has to buffer or frames are lost - loud blast of static to the speakers. This is regardless of using any of the streaming plugins or just a strm file pointing to a network streaming source.
It seems that audio keep-alive signal is sent by the Kodi player whenever the network stream needs to buffer, or otherwise halts temporarily.
Here's my question: Is there a way to disable this behaviour? Can Kodi be configured not to send this audio signal under any circumstances?
(Of course I realize my Alsa config might be to blame, but it works with everything else I've tried so I'm starting with Kodi.)
Thanks!
I've discovered that setting 'keep audio device alive' to anything other than 'Never' causes a blast of hiss/static to be output to speakers during times when the audio device is not being used. This seems to be an issue with my alsa setup and the audio signal output by Kodi in order to keep the audio device alive.
Setting 'keep audio device alive' to Never solves the issue for the most part - audio is clear and crisp, and balanced the way I want it, and the audio device responds readily. However, I find that the issue happens with streaming video whenever the video has to buffer or frames are lost - loud blast of static to the speakers. This is regardless of using any of the streaming plugins or just a strm file pointing to a network streaming source.
It seems that audio keep-alive signal is sent by the Kodi player whenever the network stream needs to buffer, or otherwise halts temporarily.
Here's my question: Is there a way to disable this behaviour? Can Kodi be configured not to send this audio signal under any circumstances?
(Of course I realize my Alsa config might be to blame, but it works with everything else I've tried so I'm starting with Kodi.)
Thanks!