[internicht]

Anyone had this?

My system does some kind of quite clever speaker fill on stereo sources (music, video, whatever), turning them into pseudo-surround.

When I play stereo sources through XBMC, this initially works as it should - ie the audio is split between front and rear speakers to give a more immersive sound. But if I then play video with native 5.1 surround source (although that video will play perfectly), any stereo sources played after this will no longer be heard through rear speakers - just in plain stereo from front / sub speakers. As far as I can tell this happens with any combination of stereo files and 5.1 files.

This behaviour will continue until I close and restart XBMC. It seems to me that once XBMC has played a full surround sound file, it decides to send signal to all available speakers, including silence to the rear speakers when playing stereo sources. So from then on, the audio subsystem thinks it is receiving full 5.1 all the time, when it is actually getting silence on the rear speaker channels. Can anyone confirm / refute this?

I have checked it is nothing to do with my broader setup by playing the same sources through MPC-HC - and I can alternate between both types of audio source with no change to adverse behaviour there.

System info:

XBMC 11 stable running on Win7 32-bit (straight into XBMC with EventGhost replacing explorer as a shell)
Pentium Dual Core E5200
2GB RAM
MSI G31TM-P35 Motherboard
Onboard HD audio (Realtek ALC888S) with driver vers: 6.0.1.6521
ATI Radeon HD5400 with driver vers: 8.951.0.0

Onboard sound uses analogue out straight into speaker system.

Log here: http://pastebin.com/pLSJxZGM

[bluray]

If your HD5400 have HDMI output, you can simply do this (HD5400 HDMI output-->AVR HDMI input-->AVR HDMI output-->HDTV HDMI input via HDMI cables) to get the best audio and video......

[internicht]

Thanks, but presumably that involves buying an AVR, and accepting that my current setup has to change because things don't work as they should.

Besides which, if XBMC is working in the way I have described above, then I'm not sure this would help - ie if it is sending silence on the rear channels when I play stereo sources, then whether these are carried in analogue or digital form, they are still silent, aren't they?

[baijuxavior]

Try XBMC Frodo Alpha 4. It has option to convert stereo channels to surround.

[internicht]

Thanks - may try that, but probably not as it's alpha software and this is a working (family) system. Stability is more important. Besides, even if it is actually doing something clever to convert stereo to surround (rather than simply mirroring the front stereo channels to rear) it will be using cpu cycles to do it rather than using the audio hardware to do it.

I suppose I should put this in as a bug report. I just wondered if anyone had experienced the same issue.

[DDDamian]

It's unlikely to be addressed as the entire audio engine was changed just after Eden final. This has been addressed in AudioEngine and Frodo. Sooner or later you'll have to upgrade

[internicht]

Thanks Damian - any info sources on the new audio engine you can point me to?

Also, can I assume that there are still plenty of stability issues with Frodo, if it's at alpha?

[Memphiz]

you can bet on it ...