[erwee73]

Hello,

I have tried to figure out how to get 5 channel audio output from my raspberry pi 3 to my surround amplifier.
The amplifier only has optical input for this, therefore I bought a 'simple' converter device on Ebay, that splits the (multi channel) audio from the hdmi output. Unfortunately this doesn't work. Well, my amplifier 'thinks' the input is Dolby prologic, but not DTS as it has to be with several music videos.
My question is: Does anybody has a raspberry running multichannel audio output and if so, what is needed for this?
Thank you and regards,

Ralph
Arnhem, Netherlands

[GreySkies]

Many of those simple converters only do 2.0 out, which could be why you're only getting Prologic. I've got a Pi3 that's doing 5.1, and another that's doing 7.1, but that's via HDMI. Here's a converter that claims to extract 5.1, including DD+.

Or, it could be that your settings have been set to 2.0, in which case you'd just need to go into your settings to tell the Pi3 to output 5.1.

[popcornmix]

Or, it could be that your settings have been set to 2.0, in which case you'd just need to go into your settings to tell the Pi3 to output 5.1.

No, this is wrong.

Optical only supports 2 channels. You *must* set number of channels to 5.1 to use optical/toslink.

It can carry compressed multichannel audio that uses two channels for transport (AC3 and DTS).
Make sure you have AC3 and DTS passthrough enabled.
Also enable "dolby digital (AC3) transcoding" to allow other multichannel formats to be transported as AC3.

[jjd-uk]

Unless the Pi does things differently, then as it's a HDMI output going to a Optical SPDIF connection, then the HDMI device in Kodi settings must be set to Number of Channels 2.0 (as the Optical is the bottleneck limited to 2 channels, note that's the number of uncompressed PCM channels available) then make sure the Settings Level is set to Advanced or Expert to see all the passthrough options in order to make sure you have enabled "Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver" and "DTS capable receiver".

In addition if you have anything that decodes to Multichannel PCM such as flac or aac 5.1 then "Enabled Dolby Digital transcoding" must also be selected for that Multichannel PCM can be encoded into compressed Dolby Digital to maintain the 5.1 channels.

[GreySkies]

Or, it could be that your settings have been set to 2.0, in which case you'd just need to go into your settings to tell the Pi3 to output 5.1.

No, this is wrong.

Optical only supports 2 channels. You *must* set number of channels to 5.1 to use optical/toslink.

It can carry compressed multichannel audio that uses two channels for transport (AC3 and DTS).
Make sure you have AC3 and DTS passthrough enabled.
Also enable "dolby digital (AC3) transcoding" to allow other multichannel formats to be transported as AC3.

Urp—you are correct. Optical isn't going to do 5.1 uncompressed. Mea culpa.