[maruchan]

Two logs:

First, with the increased <audiosinkbufferdurationmsec>
http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=7943&hash=13468115

Second, with the non-SSE build:
http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=7944&hash=68116461

Stuttering is exhibited in both. Quick hardware rundown:

Code:

Computer Type                                     ACPI x64-based PC
      Operating System                                  Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
      OS Service Pack                                   Service Pack 1
      DirectX                                           DirectX 11.0

    Motherboard:
      CPU Type                                          DualCore AMD Athlon II X2 250, 3000 MHz (15 x 200)
      Motherboard Name                                  Asus M4A78L-M
      Motherboard Chipset                               AMD 760G, AMD K10
      System Memory                                     4096 MB  (DDR2-800 DDR2 SDRAM)
      BIOS Type                                         AMI (08/20/10)

    Display:
      Video Adapter                                     NVIDIA GeForce 210  (512 MB)
      Video Adapter                                     NVIDIA GeForce 210  (512 MB)
      3D Accelerator                                    nVIDIA GeForce 210

    Multimedia:
      Audio Adapter                                     nVIDIA GT218 - High Definition Audio Controller
      Audio Adapter                                     VIA VT1708S @ ATI SB750 - High Definition Audio Controller

Receiver is a 5.1 RCA RT2280.

[DDDamian]

@maruchan - is it strictly with DTS>AC3 trancoding? Does straight AC3 play ok? Have you tried other DTS files?

Is there anyone else with a SPDIF/optical connection who can reproduce this? You would need to disable "DTS capable receiver" to make it transcode the DTS>AC3.

[maruchan]

So, I did some more testing using the latest nightly (a89fc47) and AC3 seems to work fine, as I'm assuming it's being passed through straight to the receiver. Any other format that needs to be re-encoded to AC3 causes stuttering (tested with AAC, DTS and FLAC.) If I disable all supported formats and just let it downmix to stereo LPCM, playback is smooth regardless of the format.

Also, as a slightly unrelated side note, if I switch my audio device to HDMI (which is hooked straight up to my TV) and have AC3 support enabled, massive stuttering starts to happen and the FPS drops to the low single digits (3.7 - 4.) The log says I'm trying to encode to an unsupported format, which makes sense, but I would think it would just fall back to stereo LPCM and continue on as normal?

[smf007]

@maruchan - is it strictly with DTS>AC3 trancoding? Does straight AC3 play ok? Have you tried other DTS files?

Is there anyone else with a SPDIF/optical connection who can reproduce this? You would need to disable "DTS capable receiver" to make it transcode the DTS>AC3.

Just tried this out on my system, and DTS>AC3 transcoding does seem to produce stutters in the video....not continuously. Seems to come and go as the video bitrate increases and decreases.

Running a Core i5, optical out, Win 7 64bit, 4GB ram. The sample I used was 1080P H264 with DTS 5.1 track, CPU load was ~15%. Video played fine when DTS was on passthrough. I could get a log if you think a 2nd log would help.

[DDDamian]

@smf007 - thx for confirming - sounds like a glitch somewhere in decoding the DTS or transcoding back to AC3. Will take a look at the buffering between. Appreciate the confirmation.

[Voyager]

@smf007 - thx for confirming - sounds like a glitch somewhere in decoding the DTS or transcoding back to AC3. Will take a look at the buffering between. Appreciate the confirmation.

Also related to DTS. I have a movie with a DTS ES 6.1 track that plays fine in pass-through via optical. While decoding to stereo I'm missing the center channel (no speech, only background music, which as you may understand is quite annoying). Any idea why that might be?

update: I'm reading here and there that this might be a limitation in ffmpeg

[Tlore]

Hello Everyone,

I have some issues with passing through HD audio to my receiver (Onkyo HT-S3305).
The receiver is TrueHD/HD-MA capapble, just as my VGA card (ultimate HD6670). However when I try to use any HD audio formats, it's not working.. video gets slow, there is no sound, or not HD, the receiver is not recognizing the format properly. I'm wondering where the limitation might be.. (VGA? Receiver? HDMI-cable? Software?..)
I also tried MPC-HC with different codec packs, but the result is similar, XBMC was the best so far.
Can anyone help me with this...?

Regards,
Peter

[Malosar]

Are the HD audio formats listed in the properties for the HDMI audio in windows control panel? Using the latest Catalyst drivers?

[DDDamian]

@Voyager - is it truly missing or just at a low level?
@Tlore - the 6670 should support bitstreaming HD audio no problem - Malosar's advice is correct.

[Voyager]

@DDDamian - I'm hearing absolutely nothing for the FC channel. Here's the relevant section from my log when trying to play on a 2-ch stereo speaker set: http://pastebin.com/hRnTffrP
As I said, when playing it over bitstream, everything's fine.
Another interesting fact is that I tried converting the DTS-ES track to AC3 with eac3to, and surprise, the front center channel went missing too. Not sure what settings I used though...

[jpsdr]

Maybe, it's an ffmpeg issue in that case. I vaguely remember read on doom9 forums some kind of similar issues on some channels sometimes with some (don't remember wich specific ones) DTS tracks when trying to decode with eac3to or either ffmpeg.

[Tlore]

Are the HD audio formats listed in the properties for the HDMI audio in windows control panel? Using the latest Catalyst drivers?

Sure, here a picture of the output:


And here is my setup:


And I'm using the latest catalyst too.

[Voyager]

@DDDamian - I'm hearing absolutely nothing for the FC channel. Here's the relevant section from my log when trying to play on a 2-ch stereo speaker set: http://pastebin.com/hRnTffrP
As I said, when playing it over bitstream, everything's fine.
Another interesting fact is that I tried converting the DTS-ES track to AC3 with eac3to, and surprise, the front center channel went missing too. Not sure what settings I used though...

update: I just tried again with eac3to, using the -libav switch and the center channel comes through fine. My eac3to issue was with the default decoder (ArcSoft) doing a lousy job.
eac3to.exe "\\diskstation\mediashare\Movies\Face-Off (1997).Bluray.mkv" test.dts -1536 -libav

So I think ffmpeg is fine... which brings us back to AE?

EDIT:
I'm just playing with the channel mapping (AERemap.cpp), and when I change the mixing of the Back center channel to only mix with back left as follows: RM(AE_CH_BC , AE_CH_BL);//, AE_CH_BR);
Now I get my center channel audio only on the front right channel.
So I suspect the Back center channel has the "negative" of the Front center channel, canceling it out completely...
Any thoughts on how to resolve this?

EDIT 2: problem resolved!!!!! fixed AE eemap code. see https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/1390
The back center channel had nothing to do with it. It was a bug in the "unrolled loop" code.

[Nimo]

i dont get any sound with dd+ and video plays slow. its also shown as eac3 (wasapi hdmi 5.1), everything else works fine. looks like my avr dont get any sound data, display for speaker setup stay clear.

[stewart_pk]

Using a Musical Fidelity V-Link (USB to SPDIF converter) and getting very loud static sound during playback when WASAPI is selected. Even XBMC menu sounds cause the loud static sound. When DirectSound is selected then everything is fine.

Thanks.