[noggin]

Isnt AAC an apple thing?

Apple was just a user and had nothing to do with the development:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding
they just thought it was cool to transcode MP3 to AAC or something like that.

AAC is a more modern and efficient codec than MP3. Apple chose it for iTunes Music Store downloads as it offered higher quality for a given bitrate than MP3 ISTR.  Apple have also used it in preference to AC3 I think for iTunes video content.

It's a widespread codec - DAB+ uses it, Japan uses it for broadcast TV as does the UK and some other European countries have migrated to it for TV.  HDMI AVRs sold in Japan have had bitstream AAC support - but this isn't common in North America and Europe, so decoding to PCM or transcoding to AC3 is the norm here.

[kitpgm]

Wrong.
I had multichannel PCM from MiBox. 5.1, 7.1. It worked. But it was enough to upgrade Kodi and it messed up some settings and multichannel PCM is gone.. :/ 

Check the date of the post. The firmware at that time didn't support multichannel LPCM output. It was introduced in the the Oreo firmware. 

 sorry, my bad
however  multichannel is not working again, so back to original

Does the Mi Box S support multichannel (5.1/7.1) PCM output over HDMI now, after the Android 9.0 update?

[mulderfox]

Hi everyone,
I have a lot of questions regarding hardware for playback. In order to keep things simple, I'll ask one question at a time.

I have a MiBox running Kodi. Things work as well as can be expected.
I've noticed that a lot of what I'm download has AAC audio. I've set things up so it converts it to DD. This is fine up to 5.1, but 7.1 AAC will only get encoded as 5.1 DD.
I'm not sure when AAC became popular, but my question is, is there any way to stream 7.1 AAC properly?
I'm assuming my AVR (Onkyo) won't accept multi channel AAC, this is why it gets converted to DD?
Is there any way to converting it to 7.1 DD?
Why does 7.1 AAC exist? In what situation can you play it 7.1?

Thanks

Just FYI: AAC multichannel does get played correctly on Android.. unless you use coreelec.
What it means is that most (if not all) chipset SDKs for Android do not handle AAC multichannel correctly - as in decode it to multiple channels. In most cases, even on the most recent boxes (I'm testing a couple now) it will only decode the AAC as stereo...
But coreelec which is built from the ground up on a Linux kernel does know how to handle these.

[noggin]

Hi everyone,
I have a lot of questions regarding hardware for playback. In order to keep things simple, I'll ask one question at a time.

I have a MiBox running Kodi. Things work as well as can be expected.
I've noticed that a lot of what I'm download has AAC audio. I've set things up so it converts it to DD. This is fine up to 5.1, but 7.1 AAC will only get encoded as 5.1 DD.
I'm not sure when AAC became popular, but my question is, is there any way to stream 7.1 AAC properly?
I'm assuming my AVR (Onkyo) won't accept multi channel AAC, this is why it gets converted to DD?
Is there any way to converting it to 7.1 DD?
Why does 7.1 AAC exist? In what situation can you play it 7.1?

Thanks

Just FYI: AAC multichannel does get played correctly on Android.. unless you use coreelec.
What it means is that most (if not all) chipset SDKs for Android do not handle AAC multichannel correctly - as in decode it to multiple channels. In most cases, even on the most recent boxes (I'm testing a couple now) it will only decode the AAC as stereo...
But coreelec which is built from the ground up on a Linux kernel does know how to handle these.

You might want to re-read the first line of your post? I think you mean "Just FYI: AAC multichannel does NOT get played correctly on Android.. unless you use coreelec."

Though that's a bit of an odd thing to post, as CoreElec is a replacement for Android (though you can dual boot, when you boot CoreElec you are using a standard Linux environment, not Android?)

[mulderfox]

Hi everyone,
I have a lot of questions regarding hardware for playback. In order to keep things simple, I'll ask one question at a time.

I have a MiBox running Kodi. Things work as well as can be expected.
I've noticed that a lot of what I'm download has AAC audio. I've set things up so it converts it to DD. This is fine up to 5.1, but 7.1 AAC will only get encoded as 5.1 DD.
I'm not sure when AAC became popular, but my question is, is there any way to stream 7.1 AAC properly?
I'm assuming my AVR (Onkyo) won't accept multi channel AAC, this is why it gets converted to DD?
Is there any way to converting it to 7.1 DD?
Why does 7.1 AAC exist? In what situation can you play it 7.1?

Thanks

Just FYI: AAC multichannel does get played correctly on Android.. unless you use coreelec.
What it means is that most (if not all) chipset SDKs for Android do not handle AAC multichannel correctly - as in decode it to multiple channels. In most cases, even on the most recent boxes (I'm testing a couple now) it will only decode the AAC as stereo...
But coreelec which is built from the ground up on a Linux kernel does know how to handle these.

You might want to re-read the first line of your post? I think you mean "Just FYI: AAC multichannel does NOT get played correctly on Android.. unless you use coreelec."

Though that's a bit of an odd thing to post, as CoreElec is a replacement for Android (though you can dual boot, when you boot CoreElec you are using a standard Linux environment, not Android?)

I use a SD card, so the android environment isn't affected.

[noggin]

Just FYI: AAC multichannel does get played correctly on Android.. unless you use coreelec.
What it means is that most (if not all) chipset SDKs for Android do not handle AAC multichannel correctly - as in decode it to multiple channels. In most cases, even on the most recent boxes (I'm testing a couple now) it will only decode the AAC as stereo...
But coreelec which is built from the ground up on a Linux kernel does know how to handle these.

You might want to re-read the first line of your post? I think you mean "Just FYI: AAC multichannel does NOT get played correctly on Android.. unless you use coreelec."

Though that's a bit of an odd thing to post, as CoreElec is a replacement for Android (though you can dual boot, when you boot CoreElec you are using a standard Linux environment, not Android?)

I use a SD card, so the android environment isn't affected.

Yep - so when you get correct functioning AAC->Multichannel PCM you're not using Android - you're using Linux (under CoreElec)?

Your sentence suggests that AAC only gets played correctly on Android if you use CoreElec - which isn't the case, as Android is at that point irrelevant? In other words you could wipe the Android install and just use CoreElec and it would still work - the correct functioning AAC is entirely separate and independent of Android.

[mulderfox]

Well, I haven't tested each and every Android box in existence, and some may work fine with multi channel AAC. Maybe wetek boxes, for instance. Or older models of minix.
But these days, I found that the software side is somewhat neglected by both the chipset makers and the box manufacturers for Android.
And yet, coreelec works pretty well (as long as you understand what you give up and work out what you need, such as a fast micro/sd card for instance) for the purpose of video playback.

[noggin]

Well, I haven't tested each and every Android box in existence, and some may work fine with multi channel AAC. Maybe wetek boxes, for instance. Or older models of minix.

In Android TV terms, the nVidia Shield TV does 5.1/7.1 PCM output as well as HD Audio bit streaming - so is an exception to the rule.

And yet, coreelec works pretty well (as long as you understand what you give up and work out what you need, such as a fast micro/sd card for instance) for the purpose of video playback.

Yep - my point is that once you're running CoreElec you're no longer running Android (so CoreElec doesn't allow Android to play multichannel AAC properly - as with CoreElec you're no longer running Android)