Req Solving 2.0 vs. 5.1 audio issues
#1
Music 
Hi everyone!

I have an issue with 2.0 vs. 5.1 Audio on my Mac. I'm currently running Gotham Nightly, but I had the same issues with Frodo 12.3. I just hoped they might have been solved with Gotham somehow.

I use a receiver with HDMI passtrough that will play almost anything. My TV however will play plain 2.0 only, it won't downmix to Stereo.

My solution so far (that I don't find satisfying and want to get rid of):
  • Create two user profiles, one for 5.1, one for 2.0
  • Configure each profile accordingly
  • To change audio sources, log out of one source and into the other

This is the best I could come up with. However, this is quite unsatisfying as you can imagine, not only because both profiles will eventually diverge when changing settings. Settings always have do be done in both profiles and so on...

I can't imagine I'm the only one with this problems, so I've tagged this post as feature request.

Here's what possible solutions could look like (maybe even a mix of them):
  • Recode 1.0/2.0/2.1-Sources always to 2.0 and output Sources with more than 2/2.1 channels as passtrough
  • Provide a quick-toggle for audio settings (e.g. like [T] for turning off and on subtitles)

Well, if there already is a solution, I'd be happy to hear from it Big Grin

Regards
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#2
Moved to correct subforum.
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#3
I wasn't sure this was a Mac OS X only issue so I didn't put it in the Mac subforum on purpose. If I have the time and ressources (hardware) to test this with a different piece of hardware, would you consider moving it back?!
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#4
I don't understand? The recommended audio output setting is 2.0, why would you need to use 5.1? Any digital audio output over hdmi with the 2.0 setting should still play as 5.1 on your receiver. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding your OP completely.Huh
ASUS Chromebox M004U (LibreELEC 8.2/Aeon Nox SiLVO)--->HDMI--->Onkyo TX-NR646--->HDMI--->Panasonic P65VT30
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#5
Thing is that it doesn't.

The only device connected to my TV is my receiver. When the receiver is turned off it will just pass the HDMI signal from the active source trough to the TV without any modification to the signal.

Problem now is that my TV can't handle anything more than 2.0. If the source in XBMC has 5.1, it will get passed trough to the TV (as it would to the receiver). As the TV can't handle the (AC3/DTS) signal, I don't get any sound at all.

The only way to fix this is to set "Output configuration" to "Fixed" and 2.0, but then I won't get 5.1 on the receiver any more (small wonder).

I thought of connecting the receiver via SPDIF, but this still doesn't solve the problem that I have to set "Output configuration" to "Fixed", so I still would end up with 2.0 only audio.

Oh, I just found out that I have to turn off "passtrough" to make it work with my TV, so maybe it would even work with "2.0" and "Fixed" if only my TV could handle anything else :-(
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#6
Since you have the receiver why can't you simply turn it on?
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#7
Why not just turn on the receiver and play audio through it?
ASUS Chromebox M004U (LibreELEC 8.2/Aeon Nox SiLVO)--->HDMI--->Onkyo TX-NR646--->HDMI--->Panasonic P65VT30
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#8
This might be solved once the new ActiveAE (audio engine) sink for osx is done. We plan to merge it during this week. From then on if there is no passthrough capable device detected those options will vanish automatically and also shouldn't be used anymore. Though if for some odd reason the receiver/tv still reports AC3,DTS capable streams - there is nothing we can do about it (lets hope it will only report 2.0 in that case).
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#9
(2014-02-17, 22:41)SpaceMonkey Wrote: Since you have the receiver why can't you simply turn it on?

(2014-02-17, 22:42)wgstarks Wrote: Why not just turn on the receiver and play audio through it?

Well, I don't want to be forced to use the receiver if I don't have to. Especially with 2.0 streams that doesn't make much sense.

Apart from that, the fewer the devices to operate, the higher the WAF!

XD

(2014-02-18, 14:21)Memphiz Wrote: This might be solved once the new ActiveAE (audio engine) sink for osx is done. We plan to merge it during this week.

I'm looking forward to this! Big Grin

Apart from that I came up with kind of a solution:

I disabled passtrough and set the speakers to 5.1

My receiver seems to be able to handle non-Dolby/DTS multichannel streams just fine. However, I still don't have 2.0 downmix on my television, but this is a smaller problem as I'm able to switch on the receiver if I'm watching something >2.0

So, a quick-toggle "downmix on/off" would still be nice Wink

Regards
Steffen
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Solving 2.0 vs. 5.1 audio issues0