[olebrumm71]

How much louder is the fan on the HP Chromebox compared to the Asus Chromebox ?

My "headache" is that the HP Chromebox is currently available here in Norway on a time-limited sale for NOK 999,- ( which is roughly equal to US$ 145) whereas the Asus Chromebox costs NOK 1699,- (equals approx US$ 245 ). So, would you say that a price difference of approx US$ 100,- is worth getting the Asus Chromebox versus the HP Chromebox - due to a more quiet fan ?

[danfloss]

Audio as flac, aac and so on is _never_ passthroughed. It's decoded to float by AudioEngine and then output on the sink in a matching format. If the sink can do the input sample rate and no volume is applied it's "untouched". Else it's resampled and volume is applied.

When AC3 transcode option is enabled and only 2 channels (!) (don't mix that with number of speakers) are available, it's transcoded (which also resamples if input samplerate != 48 khz) to AC3 and output as virtual dolby format.

This literally hurts my head, maybe I'm just too old

@olebrumm71 have you checked out amazon global shipping? Its entirely possibly to purchase the asus chromebox say from america and have it shipped to europe. There will be some import duties but could still work out cheaper

http://www.amazon.com/Asus-CHROMEBOX-M00...+chromebox

seems a decent price with free shipping. I recently did just this and hade no problems

[wackid]

Audio as flac, aac and so on is _never_ passthroughed. It's decoded to float by AudioEngine and then output on the sink in a matching format. If the sink can do the input sample rate and no volume is applied it's "untouched". Else it's resampled and volume is applied.

When AC3 transcode option is enabled and only 2 channels (!) (don't mix that with number of speakers) are available, it's transcoded (which also resamples if input samplerate != 48 khz) to AC3 and output as virtual dolby format.

This literally hurts my head, maybe I'm just too old

LOL also read it five times.... And feels a bit with you.

My flacs come true lossless I believe....thought.... but after reading this? My 192khz flac comes through as 192khz on my receiver.

I don't have glitches. Passthrough on, two channels. Output optimized.

[fritsch]

Not sure how I should explain that better.

There is not a single AVR that can read "flac", none. Let's assume we have a 192 khz 24 bit flac - the audiophiles get wet while reading that.

Now we want to play such a flac file with xbmc. xbmc opens he file, asks ffmpeg to decode it. ffmpeg decodes it to an intermittent format of float samples (32 bit) - nothing gets lost. Now with that 192 / AE_FMT_FLOAT we ask the sink to output this. As there is no sink that can do float, the sink tells: Here use 32bit INT format. So we take that float and fit it to the 32 bit int format SNE32 that the sink can understand and put it out. Nothing happens, all "bit perfect".

This is the optimal case. When now the AVR the TV or whatever does the output does not understand 192 khz, we have to resample this to for example 48 khz. When the sink also does not understand a 32 bit int format, we have to rescale that into a 16bit format, which looses precission, to output.

Btw. all the nifty audiophiles could take part in my resampling quiz:

Test 1
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5572...er2-0.flac
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5572...er2-1.flac
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5572...er2-2.flac

The original file you can be found here: http://www.2l.no/hires/ - the tilte is called: Finzi: Come Away, Death Marianne Beate Kielland, mezzo soprano Sergej Osadchuk, piano 192 khz / 24 bit

Test 2
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5572..._orig.flac (Original)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5572...ham_0.flac
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5572...ham_1.flac
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5572...ham_2.flac

What you need to do:
Download the files and listen to them. I for my part can clearly hear the difference on my B&W speakers - so, the big question is again: Which number corresponds to low, which to middle and which to high? And as a sidenote which one compares best to the original?

[wackid]

Fritsch many thanks for the very clear explaination.

I will do the contest on my German speakers (Canton Chrono SL 590.2) when its quiet in the house. With high and low you mean the samplerates i guess.

[olebrumm71]

@olebrumm71 have you checked out amazon global shipping? Its entirely possibly to purchase the asus chromebox say from america and have it shipped to europe. There will be some import duties but could still work out cheaper

http://www.amazon.com/Asus-CHROMEBOX-M00...+chromebox

seems a decent price with free shipping. I recently did just this and hade no problems

I just checked the total price on the link you gave me ordering from Amazon- and it ends with a total of 1690,- NOK (Norwegian Crowns), which is the exact same price as buying it locally.


So, therefore I am contemplating to buy the HP Chromebox (with 4 GB RAM) for 999,- NOK (including free local shipping) from a Norwegian store.

That's why I am wondering how big the fan noise difference between the HP and Asus model is? I also believe I have read that the custom firmware reduces the fan noise difference between the HP and the Asus model significantly?

[GoodOmens]

@olebrumm71 have you checked out amazon global shipping? Its entirely possibly to purchase the asus chromebox say from america and have it shipped to europe. There will be some import duties but could still work out cheaper

http://www.amazon.com/Asus-CHROMEBOX-M00...+chromebox

seems a decent price with free shipping. I recently did just this and hade no problems

I just checked the total price on the link you gave me ordering from Amazon- and it ends with a total of 1690,- NOK (Norwegian Crowns), which is the exact same price as buying it locally.


So, therefore I am contemplating to buy the HP Chromebox (with 4 GB RAM) for 999,- NOK (including free local shipping) from a Norwegian store.

That's why I am wondering how big the fan noise difference between the HP and Asus model is? I also believe I have read that the custom firmware reduces the fan noise difference between the HP and the Asus model significantly?

I have the HP and it's just fine. I can't notice the fan noise - especially while playing anything on the TV. You don't watch your movies with mute on do you?

[Matt Devo]

I did a Coreboot Firmware update within OpenELEC on the 13th. The update process was smooth as usual.

Only issue with the new firmware is that waking from sleep/suspend with my MCE remote/receiver has now stopped working. It was flawless previously. I'll do a full disconnect/reconnect and reboot this evening to check again. But previously after updates this functionality hadn't changed. Running a standalone system with OpenELEC. WOL works fine as does waking using HDMI-CEC by switching on the TV/Amp.

just tested it here with my MCE remote, works fine. I'd do a full power off/power on and retry.

One other issue I've found across various firmwares, which is more likely due to my Amp/TV setup is that when connected to my Amp on first boot I get nothing on the TV screen. All the correct inputs are selected. I've had to resort to plugging the HP Chromebox directly into the TV, booting, then switching the cables, suspending/resuming from there works fine (so it's only required on first cold boot). The amp is an Onkyo TX-SR309, I've seen a few people have issues with Onkyo Amps due to EDID problems?

I believe there is a way to capture the EDID from your receiver and use that vs what's coming across the wire, which may solve your problem, but not sure on the specifics. It could also be due to the headless booting feature, which likely waits for less time at boot for a valid EDID response. I can provide you a firmware to test which doesn't have headless booting, just PM me.

How much louder is the fan on the HP Chromebox compared to the Asus Chromebox ?

My "headache" is that the HP Chromebox is currently available here in Norway on a time-limited sale for NOK 999,- ( which is roughly equal to US$ 145) whereas the Asus Chromebox costs NOK 1699,- (equals approx US$ 245 ). So, would you say that a price difference of approx US$ 100,- is worth getting the Asus Chromebox versus the HP Chromebox - due to a more quiet fan ?

with the box in a media center and some level of audio playing, I suspect the difference is inaudible. It's only on a desk 3' away with no other noise that it's really noticeable.

[Tinwarble]

One other issue I've found across various firmwares, which is more likely due to my Amp/TV setup is that when connected to my Amp on first boot I get nothing on the TV screen. All the correct inputs are selected. I've had to resort to plugging the HP Chromebox directly into the TV, booting, then switching the cables, suspending/resuming from there works fine (so it's only required on first cold boot). The amp is an Onkyo TX-SR309, I've seen a few people have issues with Onkyo Amps due to EDID problems?

It's not just Onkyo, I have nearly the same problem with my Denon, although I can fix mine by just switching inputs on the AVR to something else then back to the Chromebox. It also happens if I select "Adjust refresh rate to match video" and seems to be an issue switching refresh rates (even at boot), especially at the 30 and 60Hz range, if I force it to 24 or 23.98Hz then I don't have the issue.

Also, doing it the way you are currently doing it is that you are using the EDID from the TV which will not include all the functions your AVR is capable of, such as HD Audio.

You can pull your EDID by ssh-ing into the box and running the commands:

find /sys -name "edid"

That should produce something like this:

/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/drm/card0/card0-HDMI-A-1/edid
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/drm/card0/card0-HDMI-A-2/edid
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/drm/card0/card0-DP-1/edid


The first one should be the path, but you'll need to copy it to a SMB folder so you can access it from you PC. So you'll have run the command:

cp /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/drm/card0/card0-HDMI-A-1/edid /storage/.kodi/userdata/edid.bin

But use the path from what the find name produced, not sure if it will be different. Then you can just access your Userdata folder from you PC and see the edid.bin file.

You can view the resulting edid.bin by using Extron EDID Manager.

[Matt Devo]

and using that (correct) EDID data, one can force OE to use that data on startup by following the instructions on the OE wiki: http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php?title=...#tab=Intel

[ant_thomas]

Thanks, full disconnect/reconnect and the MCE wake from suspend is working again.

I believe there is a way to capture the EDID from your receiver and use that vs what's coming across the wire, which may solve your problem, but not sure on the specifics. It could also be due to the headless booting feature, which likely waits for less time at boot for a valid EDID response. I can provide you a firmware to test which doesn't have headless booting, just PM me.

I had tried one or two of the methods of saving the EDID to file and forcing it to load, I believe this used to work for me but possibly stopped working after a previous OpenELEC update (I had a feeling the Intel driver had been updated which meant it stopped working)

I could probably do with cleaning up what startup scripts I have running and try the EDID loading method again.

I'm happy to try the alternative firmware if it helps you or is of any interest to you?

[Tinwarble]

and using that (correct) EDID data, one can force OE to use that data on startup by following the instructions on the OE wiki: http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php?title=...#tab=Intel

Not quite that easy, since you first have to create a custom EDID. You could possible, if you don't have issues when plugged directly into your TV, pull the EDID for your TV and combine the video portion with the audio portion of your AVR's EDID.

Or you could find someone with a similar setup and have them pull their EDID and compare it with yours and use something like Deltacast TV E-EDID Editor.

But that's beyond the scope of me explaining.

[Arse4life]

Have an old wireless usb keyboard and no go for me. Ctrl-alt-f2 not working. Going to buy a wired usb keyboard see if that works.

Matt, if I have the 30sec screen delay I'm in dev mode correct?

I was able to get into setup script with a $10 usb keyboard. Success! Thanks!

[wackid]

Maybe I have had the same problem with edid.

Saw that the black was very grey. When I pushes the frequency to 50hz. The blacks were black again.
It was on 30hz don't know why.

Onkyo receiver and Panasonic plasma.

[christoofar]

Sounds like no one else is having this issue. Already tried Best Match , but was still having the dropouts. I wouldn't even know where to begin regarding IRC. Guess I'll just leave it be for now, hoping that a new version will fix it. Thanks for all the help on this.

http://openelec.tv/support/chat

I'd still like you to provide me at least one sample file so I can try to reproduce the issue here. Also, see if the issue happens with the ChromeBox directly connected to your display (TV) rather than the AVR.

OK, I posted my issue in IRC chat, we'll if anyone responds. I will reset OE back to "normal" (w/ passthru) & pick the first track that burps & post it to my Dropbox , shared to your email.
Kinda late now, will do it tomorrow morning.

Very strange...turned on the box today set it back to "Best Match" again, started up Party Mode & it hasn't burped once today (over an hour so far) A new wrinkle though, my FireTV remote hasn't worked the last two times I've booted to OE & tried manuvering around in Kodi, had to go back in & re-pair it.