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If I could ask a wish, please don't make mono play through the center speaker. IMHO that is a non-standard configuration, it should be played as double mono through both front speakers. How to play mono is rather something that can and should be set in the amp. Also, center speaker is usually not of the same quality as the stereo speakers. Thanks!
Posts: 3,901
Joined: Sep 2013
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In the event of there being no channel mapping at all, Kodi will ask FFmpeg for a default layout based upon the number of channels in the file. As we are beholden to what FFmpeg returns, this may or may not be correct. Note that this is before the audio chain gets to the WASAPI driver.
I'd also point out that the original code is something like ~10 years old and has worked pretty well for the vast majority of users before this change. It's only when Kodi starts encountering non-standard stuff or edge-cases that things start to go amiss. This is why we like standards!
Given a channel layout somewhere, Kodi will try to open an output containing at least that channel map and ignore any extra channels it may contain. If there is no channel layout at all then it will 'best guess' via FFmpeg using the number of channels. But, if you want some funky channel layout, why wouldn't you specify it somewhere? It would be unwise for example to throw a four channel file in and expect Kodi to know whether you want Quad or Surround (FL,FL,BL,BR vs FL,FR,FC,BC) or indeed 3.1 without a channel map to tell it.
If everything fails, you will either get stereo as a last resort or there is something wrong with your configuration/driver. This scenario is unlikely though.
Learning Linux the hard way !!