[mossman1120]

Did you tried out that DP2HDMI adapter?
Your board has the same LSPCON chip like mine has. Maybe the root of the problems is there.... I've ordered an adapter but did not had the time to run tests as I didn't get any sound at all when plugged in 
But next week I have some days off, so I can play around with it....

I had luck with the 1080P one that I was using when I had issues with on the board port. When I got the 4K setup I figure I would give the onboard a try and for whatever reason it started working. Once I noticed the dropout issues I tried the 4K version but I had nothing but trouble trying to get it to work. Black screen, no audio, ect...very weird. I even tried to do some troubleshooting with StarTech but they weren't too helpful. By then it was suggested to swap the cables out so I just did and like magic it started working. Figured if I don't need to use an adaptor, don't.

[3dfx]

Yeah, never change a running system 
Like you I bought the "4K AmazonBasics cables" but I couldn't get 4K@60 to work so I bought good (but not overprized) cables and it would like a charm right away (except the Atmos issue).
The only issue I still have are these sporadic cutouts. Can be after hours of working flawlessly when it hits.
I wrote it in a post before, when I change HDMI ports back an forth it works again for..... many hours or minutes but mostly hours.
When I change ports I see the full list of supported codecs from ALSA and in dmesg I see

Code:

[drm] Got external EDID base block and 1 extension from "edid/vsx934.bin" for connector "DP-1"

Next time when I have the cutouts I will try

Code:

alsa force-reload

When that works, it's maybe an ALSA issue 

[mossman1120]

Yeah, never change a running system 
Like you I bought the "4K AmazonBasics cables" but I couldn't get 4K@60 to work so I bought good (but not overprized) cables and it would like a charm right away (except the Atmos issue).
The only issue I still have are these sporadic cutouts. Can be after hours of working flawlessly when it hits.
I wrote it in a post before, when I change HDMI ports back an forth it works again for..... many hours or minutes but mostly hours.
When I change ports I see the full list of supported codecs from ALSA and in dmesg I see

Code:

[drm] Got external EDID base block and 1 extension from "edid/vsx934.bin" for connector "DP-1"

Next time when I have the cutouts I will try

Code:

alsa force-reload

When that works, it's maybe an ALSA issue 

Have you uninstalled pulse audio from your system? I just have alsa running since the machine is only used for Kodi. I wonder if there would be any benefit to hard coding the edid settings. I saw in another thread that you can save the information and then set some kernel / grub / boot parameters to force load that edid. I wonder if that would stop the alsa issue.

When I was getting issues sometimes just doing a hard stop and restart of the video would clear it up. Other times a Kodi quit and relaunch would.

[3dfx]

That's what I did. I'm loading that EDID file during boot with an grub entry.
What it solves is that I can reboot the PC without issues when TV/AMP is turned off.

PulseAudio isn't uninstalled but disabled. Good poing, I will test it with uninstalled PA.
But before that I'm gonna have to make a CloneZilla backup

When I was getting issues sometimes just doing a hard stop and restart of the video would clear it up. Other times a Kodi quit and relaunch would. 

Strange, my cutouts are not gone when relaunching Kodi. But I have (when they hit) playing video and audio.
Restarting helps in my case also ^^

[mossman1120]

That's what I did. I'm loading that EDID file during boot with an grub entry.
What it solves is that I can reboot the PC without issues when TV/AMP is turned off.

PulseAudio isn't uninstalled but disabled. Good poing, I will test it with uninstalled PA.
But before that I'm gonna have to make a CloneZilla backup

When I was getting issues sometimes just doing a hard stop and restart of the video would clear it up. Other times a Kodi quit and relaunch would. 

Strange, my cutouts are not gone when relaunching Kodi. But I have (when they hit) playing video and audio.
Restarting helps in my case also ^^ 

Do you have links to steps for the EDID process? I think I want to do that as well because I have restarted and then I end up having to reboot once I am in front of the HTPC because I forgot to turn the TV on.

The replacement HDMI switch is coming today so I am going to see if I can wire that up this evening.

[3dfx]

This is more or less from Kodi-wiki:

Code:

sudo apt install read-edid edid-decode
mkdir /lib/firmware/edid/

# the integer after -m is the monitor id, starting from zero and incrementing by one.
sudo get-edid -m 0 > /lib/firmware/edid/edid.bin

# View the output of this command and verify you have the right monitor.
# You can tell via the vendor, resolutions, serial number, all that jazz.
cat /lib/firmware/edid/edid.bin | edid-decode


In your grub config you have to add the edid file:

Code:

CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR="/lib/firmware"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="video=DP1:3840x2160@60 drm.edid_firmware=DP-1:edid/vsx934.bin"

My grub file looks like this:

Code:

CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR="/lib/firmware"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="pci=noaer elevator=deadline quiet splash video=DP1:3840x2160@60 drm.edid_firmware=DP-1:edid/vsx934.bin"

After that:

Code:

sudo update-grub

You have to check the name of your HDMI/DP port, my is DP1 and you have to play with DP1 vs DP-1 (don't know why it differs...)

On many cases it's recomended to plug the TV directly to the PC and extract the edid as you want your resolutions of your TV listed.
But when I extracted my edid from the TV, the audio capabilities of my AVR was missing so I searched and found a good and free edid editor here so you can add modelines or info yourself to your edid.
Also, sometimes the edid files you extracted doesn't have all modelines, my edid file missed modeline like 3840x2160@50

[Csimbi]

I had installed LibreELEC today and had a hard time setting up HDMI-based audio, but after fiddling with it for an hour, I got it.
I found that there was no connection until I sent a 2.0 signal first (from a random online radio), like this:
Out: NVidia HDMI1, set to 2.0
Passthrough: Enabled, via NVidia HDMI1
This way, I got the sound (I did not, in any other way).
Then, I started a DTS-HD MA 7.1 movie and flipped from 2.0 to 7.1.
Bang, it was working, now I can change content from 2.0 to 7.1 and AV receiver picks it up.
See if doing this 2.0/7.1 cycle resets some components and gets rid of the audio issues.

Also make sure that the storage you are reading from does not have buffer underrun issues (I had audio cuts like that from an external HDD via USB2, which was fixed when I replaced that with an SSD).

Good luck!

[mossman1120]

This is more or less from Kodi-wiki:

Code:

sudo apt install read-edid edid-decode
mkdir /lib/firmware/edid/

# the integer after -m is the monitor id, starting from zero and incrementing by one.
sudo get-edid -m 0 > /lib/firmware/edid/edid.bin

# View the output of this command and verify you have the right monitor.
# You can tell via the vendor, resolutions, serial number, all that jazz.
cat /lib/firmware/edid/edid.bin | edid-decode


In your grub config you have to add the edid file:

Code:

CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR="/lib/firmware"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="video=DP1:3840x2160@60 drm.edid_firmware=DP-1:edid/vsx934.bin"

My grub file looks like this:

Code:

CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR="/lib/firmware"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="pci=noaer elevator=deadline quiet splash video=DP1:3840x2160@60 drm.edid_firmware=DP-1:edid/vsx934.bin"

After that:

Code:

sudo update-grub

You have to check the name of your HDMI/DP port, my is DP1 and you have to play with DP1 vs DP-1 (don't know why it differs...)

On many cases it's recomended to plug the TV directly to the PC and extract the edid as you want your resolutions of your TV listed.
But when I extracted my edid from the TV, the audio capabilities of my AVR was missing so I searched and found a good and free edid editor here so you can add modelines or info yourself to your edid.
Also, sometimes the edid files you extracted doesn't have all modelines, my edid file missed modeline like 3840x2160@50

Thanks for the steps. I am going to give this a try because I would like to reboot without having to worry about everything being on. I though when dumping the EDID you were suppose to do it with the TV and AMP inline so that way the EDID would get all the correct audio + video settings? I assume the AMP would merge the TV EDID with its EDID so the down stream device would know it can send encoded audio.

I swapped out the HDMI switch and it seemed to work at first but on the second video and going forward (tried restarting Kodi, the machine, ect.) it did same thing. Plugging the HTPC directly into the AMP with no reboot or restart problem went away. I am going to follow up on my support ticket and see if they provide any other suggestions.

[mossman1120]

I had installed LibreELEC today and had a hard time setting up HDMI-based audio, but after fiddling with it for an hour, I got it.
I found that there was no connection until I sent a 2.0 signal first (from a random online radio), like this:
Out: NVidia HDMI1, set to 2.0
Passthrough: Enabled, via NVidia HDMI1
This way, I got the sound (I did not, in any other way).
Then, I started a DTS-HD MA 7.1 movie and flipped from 2.0 to 7.1.
Bang, it was working, now I can change content from 2.0 to 7.1 and AV receiver picks it up.
See if doing this 2.0/7.1 cycle resets some components and gets rid of the audio issues.

Also make sure that the storage you are reading from does not have buffer underrun issues (I had audio cuts like that from an external HDD via USB2, which was fixed when I replaced that with an SSD).

Good luck!

I haven't had that issue. If you use the passthough audio and tell it not to transcode anything I think no matter how many channels it has it will be passed to the amp. The channel selection thing I think is used for something else. If you are just using the machine as a HTPC and doing all playback though Kodi you can also uninstall Pulse so it always starts using ALSA or force ALSA sync with an environment flag. When I start play back there is a second or two of no audio until the AMP starts decoding and then I get full output with the encoding type that the video contains. Everything is in sync. I think that delay has something to do with the ALSA waking back up? I wish there was a way for it to not "sleep"

[3dfx]

I had installed LibreELEC today and had a hard time setting up HDMI-based audio, but after fiddling with it for an hour, I got it.
I found that there was no connection until I sent a 2.0 signal first (from a random online radio), like this:
Out: NVidia HDMI1, set to 2.0
Passthrough: Enabled, via NVidia HDMI1
This way, I got the sound (I did not, in any other way).
Then, I started a DTS-HD MA 7.1 movie and flipped from 2.0 to 7.1.
Bang, it was working, now I can change content from 2.0 to 7.1 and AV receiver picks it up.
See if doing this 2.0/7.1 cycle resets some components and gets rid of the audio issues.

Also make sure that the storage you are reading from does not have buffer underrun issues (I had audio cuts like that from an external HDD via USB2, which was fixed when I replaced that with an SSD).

Good luck!

I haven't had that issue. If you use the passthough audio and tell it not to transcode anything I think no matter how many channels it has it will be passed to the amp. The channel selection thing I think is used for something else. If you are just using the machine as a HTPC and doing all playback though Kodi you can also uninstall Pulse so it always starts using ALSA or force ALSA sync with an environment flag. When I start play back there is a second or two of no audio until the AMP starts decoding and then I get full output with the encoding type that the video contains. Everything is in sync. I think that delay has something to do with the ALSA waking back up? I wish there was a way for it to not "sleep"    

These settings are important if passthrough is not active, i.e. playing a video file with 2.0/5.1/7.1 AAC audio so Kodi opens so many PCM channels.
For passthrough the AMP uses it's own "channel mapping" configured in the AMP.
 

Also make sure that the storage you are reading from does not have buffer underrun issues (I had audio cuts like that from an external HDD via USB2, which was fixed when I replaced that with an SSD).

The source isn't the cause of my issues, audio files are on an internally SSD and video files on a server mounted via smb. So two different sources and the SSD is fast enough for audio files not to nning into a buffer underrun.

[3dfx]

Thanks for the steps. I am going to give this a try because I would like to reboot without having to worry about everything being on. I though when dumping the EDID you were suppose to do it with the TV and AMP inline so that way the EDID would get all the correct audio + video settings? I assume the AMP would merge the TV EDID with its EDID so the down stream device would know it can send encoded audio.

I swapped out the HDMI switch and it seemed to work at first but on the second video and going forward (tried restarting Kodi, the machine, ect.) it did same thing. Plugging the HTPC directly into the AMP with no reboot or restart problem went away. I am going to follow up on my support ticket and see if they provide any other suggestions.

Yeah in theory you should extraxt EDID when both are connected but in my setup it wasn't correct (for whatever reason) so I dumped two files, TV only and AMP only and merged them myself with AW EDID editor.

Also I tested running

Code:

alsa force-reload

when having the cutouts, and after that cutouts are gone.... (until they come back after an undefined amount of time).
But, in Kodi "keep audio device alive" needs to be set to "off" so ALSA isn't blocked when telling it to reload.
I stop currently playing media (regardless audio/video) and wait a few seconds so ALSA is freed. After forcing ALSA to reload and it runs successfully, cutouts are gone!!
So, right now, I believe (don't have any prove it's just what I've observed from the behaviour, I will look up how to turn on ALSA debug-logging) it's a problem with ALSA and not a Kodi issue.

[mossman1120]

Thanks for the steps. I am going to give this a try because I would like to reboot without having to worry about everything being on. I though when dumping the EDID you were suppose to do it with the TV and AMP inline so that way the EDID would get all the correct audio + video settings? I assume the AMP would merge the TV EDID with its EDID so the down stream device would know it can send encoded audio.

I swapped out the HDMI switch and it seemed to work at first but on the second video and going forward (tried restarting Kodi, the machine, ect.) it did same thing. Plugging the HTPC directly into the AMP with no reboot or restart problem went away. I am going to follow up on my support ticket and see if they provide any other suggestions.

Yeah in theory you should extraxt EDID when both are connected but in my setup it wasn't correct (for whatever reason) so I dumped two files, TV only and AMP only and merged them myself with AW EDID editor.

Also I tested running

Code:

alsa force-reload

when having the cutouts, and after that cutouts are gone.... (until they come back after an undefined amount of time).
But, in Kodi "keep audio device alive" needs to be set to "off" so ALSA isn't blocked when telling it to reload.
I stop currently playing media (regardless audio/video) and wait a few seconds so ALSA is freed. After forcing ALSA to reload and it runs successfully, cutouts are gone!!
So, right now, I believe (don't have any prove it's just what I've observed from the behaviour, I will look up how to turn on ALSA debug-logging) it's a problem with ALSA and not a Kodi issue. 

Dumping the ALSA logs would be pretty interesting. I know the new AMP and I think TV has some form of Lip Sync correction...I wonder if that is causing issues?

I forgot, for your setup you are doing the Pulse uninstalled, ALSA_SYNC on Kodi start, or something else?

[3dfx]

Dumping the ALSA logs would be pretty interesting. I know the new AMP and I think TV has some form of Lip Sync correction...I wonder if that is causing issues?

That was also on my mind, also stuff like ARC and CEC. Disabling all of that new fancy-tech didn't change anything
 

I forgot, for your setup you are doing the Pulse uninstalled, ALSA_SYNC on Kodi start, or something else? 

PulseAudio was disabled, I removed it completely, except two libs as they have dependant packages installed.
But removing PulseAudio didn't change anything.
I'm not doing a force-reload before starting Kodi as the cutouts happen as Kodi is running. I.e. play audio, play audio, play video, play video and so on and on, BAZZINGA the cutout are there. It also can happen that there are no cutouts a whole day or two. That's why it's not sooo bad, but I would like to know why and also get rid of them 

[mossman1120]

So I ordered a new HDMI splitter from Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PFHWHQT) and it seems to be working much much better. I will sometimes get the dropouts but I can without fail stop playback. Wait a second. And restart playback and the drop outs will be gone. This wouldn't work for the other one. Kinivo offered me a refund on the one I had purchased and said they are going to do further investigation to see if they can sort out what the issue is. I am not sure if they will actually do that but the fact they offered me a refund was excellent customer service.

[3dfx]

Very strange, my dropouts are not gone when stopping and starting playback again. But pausing, switching HDMI channel on AVR forth and back gets rid of the cutouts.
Sadly that HDMI splitter is not listed on amazon.DE