[rizu]

  Output configuration : Fixed (this is important to force the PCM stream)

Fixed is problematic as many TV channels only have 2 channel stereo audio but still have dolby prologic info encoded into it. If you just send 5.1 or 7.1 to receiver on stereo signal, it will not use automatic prologic decoding. By using Kodi settings Best Match I can get Kodi to send right amount of channels to the AV receiver which can then enables prologic only when 2ch signal gets through. That being said, if one gets stable multichannel PCM out of Kodi with FireTV's Best available option, one could make some source code changes for codi to treat 2ch signal outputs differently to solve the issue I described here.

So far I haven't gotten any luck on that FireTV surround option but granted I haven't tried 96kHZ specifically, I've tried fixed + 48 and 192 kHz but those didn't work proper for me. I'll try that 96kHz if it'll make some difference. Also when it comes to 7.1 having channels swapped, I think it actually swaps the (side) surround L and R speakers around, if this is consistent behaviour, one would think it should be fixable on Kodi source code too.

[Luke M]

  Output configuration : Fixed (this is important to force the PCM stream)

Fixed is problematic as many TV channels only have 2 channel stereo audio but still have dolby prologic info encoded into it. If you just send 5.1 or 7.1 to receiver on stereo signal, it will not use automatic prologic decoding. By using Kodi settings Best Match I can get Kodi to send right amount of channels to the AV receiver which can then enables prologic only when 2ch signal gets through.

This is only possible when FireTV transcodes to DD/DD+. It's not possible to output 2 channel PCM regardless of Kodi setting.

[rizu]

Pretty sure I got 2ch PCM out of Kodi before but it could have been with PCM forced on FireTV's end, have to do more testing.

I did also test the 96kHz thing on fixed setup and I now remembered what was the issue with this one. At least our local TV broadcasting just drops audio every few seconds if I force Kodi to 96kHz. With 48kHz stereo PCM and DD+ are fine. This could be limited to specific stereo sources though, I don't really have extensive library of stereo content to test this with, but it definitely is an issue while I'm using Kodi's TV through MediaPortal TV Server.

Fixed + 96kHz setting (could be that 192kHz works too, didn't retest yet) did pass LPCM through on movies properly so I think there is something that could be done with all this, basically if one forced "Best Match" setting on Kodi to use higher sampling rate than 48kHz on 5.1+ audio tracks, it would probably work fine on all occasions on my end.

As a side note juggling between these settings often results to FireTV going into state where it either:
- doesn't output any sound
- slowly starts to stutter the stream until it dies
- with above scenario, this often results on getting hard reset on whole firetv if one keeps playing back video
after full hard reset, things work again until you swap the setting enough. This isn't really an issue for me, it just makes testing different settings bit more tedious as it's slower to see the real impact (would need to do full system reset to really see if the setting works as intended).

[rizu]

if one forced "Best Match" setting on Kodi to use higher sampling rate than 48kHz on 5.1+ audio tracks, it would probably work fine on all occasions on my end

This part would probably require Kodi source modifications, not that scared of that yet, altho I've never done APK building for Kodi before. I've modified and done custom Kodi builds for windows in past so have to learn new things while tackling this =) I'm just first trying to figure out what works and what could be done about it without too big negative side effects, right now it feels like just brute forcing that Best Match mode to run high enough sampling rate to bypass DD+ would do the trick.

[Sholander]

Need some help
I just cannot find my way in multiple releases of Kodi for my Fire Stick 4k, so I ask following question:
Which is now the best version to install on stock Fire TV Stick 4K ?

[Kodroid]

Which is now the best version to install on stock Fire TV Stick 4K ?

19.1. I don't know why you guys keep asking this. There's no current magic build being discussed in this thread.

[rizu]

Which is now the best version to install on stock Fire TV Stick 4K ?

19.1. I don't know why you guys keep asking this. There's no current magic build being discussed in this thread.

There's a ton of complains on Matrix specifically among Android users. Yes, matrix has fixes that benefit FireTV if you want lossless audio but otherwise Leia users claim it's got way less frame skipping and other audio issues. I haven't done any comparison since my first FireTV build was on Matrix already.

[rizu]

But if the question was for custom builds, those audio specific fixes have been long merged to Matrix.

[Sholander]

Which is now the best version to install on stock Fire TV Stick 4K ?

19.1. I don't know why you guys keep asking this. There's no current magic build being discussed in this thread.

That is exactly my reason for asking; stable 19.1 or any in the Test Folder? Sorry for being so lame.

[Kodroid]

stable 19.1 or any in the Test Folder?

19.2 as of right now.

[Kodroid]

19.3 is out, it "fixes a longstanding issue with Atmos audio on all platforms that support TrueHD passthrough."

[rizu]

I don't think real pass through is possible with the current version state. What comes out as DD or DD+ is re-encoded by the stick, I came to that conclusion when trying to play a 7.1 DD+ and it came out as 5.1.

After many tests this is the config that worked to get a pure 7.1 PCM stream.

Fire TV Audio setting : Best Match

Kodi Audio Setting :
Audio Decoder
  Audio output device : AudioTrack(IEC), Kodi IEC packer (recommended)
  Number of channels : 7.1 or 5.1
  Output configuration : Fixed (this is important to force the PCM stream)
  Limit sampling rate (kHz):  96.0   (this is important to force the PCM stream)
  Send low volume noise: OFF  (this is important to stop the Fire Stick from crashing and rebooting)

I used a while these settings and while the audio quality is notably better but it justs FireTV crash and reboot all the time. And yes I've set that low volume noise off as well. I had to go back to DD+ encoding setup but I really dislike it too as I feel everything has audio desync with it. Didn't observe the same when Kodi actually decodes everything and sends PCM to receiver - it's just too unstable for daily use on my end.

[FolkSong]

Does anyone else get the issue where Kodi won't launch a lot of the time? The only way I can get it to launch is by going into the Android settings and deleting the cache and force-stopping it. I've tried a fresh reinstall and that fixes it for a few days but it starts happening again after a while.

[DarrenHill]

How are you exiting from Kodi?

If you're just closing it or force-stopping it, rather than using the quit option in the power menu then you may be corrupting the databases etc (those are written and updated on exit from the app), which could perhaps cause it.

[rizu]

Does anyone else get the issue where Kodi won't launch a lot of the time? The only way I can get it to launch is by going into the Android settings and deleting the cache and force-stopping it. I've tried a fresh reinstall and that fixes it for a few days but it starts happening again after a while.

I had this first time few days ago. I didn't clear cache but updated Kodi to latest version (19.3) and haven't see the issue again so far but it also could be a coincidence.