[oldtvwatcher]

 You are 100% wrong on your ubuntu server assumptions. Pulseaudio is not installed. 

 Well I have never attempted to install Kodi on Ubuntu Server, only on Ubuntu Desktop, so I was just taking a guess.  Ubuntu Desktop does install and use Pulseaudio by default, so was not a long stretch to think that the Server version might have done the same.

[fritsch]

Yeah and cause Ubuntu Desktop installs gnome3 and firefox it's not a long strecht that server installs it too ... I cannot follow this logic

[Preacher]

<offtopic>
The howto does not install pulseaudio ...
</offtopc>

Maybe he meant getting pulseaudio disabled so that he could use ALSA, which is the only thing that seems to work correctly for passthrough audio.

Your observation is correct. 

Initially I had no sound working (down HDMI) and a troubleshooting guide suggested that the volume could simply have been turned down, so I'd need to use some tools to check the volume levels were set correctly.  And - guessing by the remainder of the thread - it's perfectly possible I installed PulseAudio as part of my troubleshooting steps.  All I recall is that I managed to get sound coming out of the jackplug, but couldn't get it to passthrough to the HDMI... I recall one final suggestion was to ditch PulseAudio completely; in frustration I uninstalled it, rebooted, and... everything bloody well worked: my TV spoke!  After a few more experimental reboots, sound still continued to emerge from the TV.

(You can read my initial woes here: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=175631)

Now, just to put the record straight: it sounds like confusion arose from my (poorly-worded) statement of "Both instructions worked pretty much flawlessly, apart from some minor messing about with pulseAudio to get sound fed down the HDMI connector" - this was NOT intended to indicate that the instructions were to blame for my audio woes.  Perhaps I should have written: "I finally got everything working, with help from the instructions and despite my additional fiddling with PulseAudio (which wasn't needed in the first place)".  Guys, that confusion's on me: don't let my ambiguity cause a disagreement which really shouldn't exist.  My bad there!

Look, I get stuff working thanks to not just the great efforts of those designing, building and maintaining Kodi.. but also to the assistance offered here.  Let's shrug this misunderstanding (that I take responsibility for) off, then move on - it's not worth wasting further effort, especially when there's more worthy causes out there.

Sermon over... peace n out!

[User 421137]

I don't know details for Ubuntu since I use Linux Mint 19 (which is also based on Ubuntu bionic) and Kodi 17.6
Also for me everything looked very complicated but, if I remember right, the only step I had to do, was to install the VAAPI driver (from the mint repository?) and everything was fine.
I guess it was like this:

Code:

sudo apt-get install i965-va-driver libva-intel-vaapi-driver vainfo

Note: It was Linux Mint and I'm not sure if it also fits to Ubuntu. I'm also not sure about dependecies. I think vainfo is not mandatory.

BTW: I don't know, why I had to do this manually. Linux distributions are often installing a lot of "trash" (e.g. LibreOffice, ...), but not mandatory drivers for full support of the hardware. It might be so easy nowadays, since we only have 3 relevant vendors (Intel, nVidia, ATI) for graphic cards.