No stable audio with Tiger Lake NUC
#1
Note: Including some background info on the hardware and software I'm using to provide as much info as I think may be relevant, but skip to Current Issues for TLDR.

Hello, all.  Been at this on and off for a few days trying to get audio working from my new Tiger Lake NUC and just can't get it.  Could really use any pointers, whether it's some config issue or possibly even a kernel/driver bug or something since this is relatively.  Just not sure how to effectively troubleshoot this.

Hardware
I'm running a Panther Canyon (Tiger Lake) NUC w/ Inte Xe graphics - also called NUC 11 Performance.  Specific model is NUC11PAKi5.  This is connected to a Denon AVR-X3300W via HDMI.  Ideally, I'm trying to use passthrough audio for everything possible.

This is replacing an ASRock BeeBox-S 7200U based on Intel Kaby Lake and integrated video.  I also had an older NUC 5 (broadwell) w/ integrated Intel video.  Both were connected to this same receiver and TV and worked perfectly from an audio perspective, so reasonably sure the issue isn't with the receiver.

Software / Environment
Gentoo amd64
Kodi 19.1
Kernel 5.13.3
Mesa 21.1.4
ALSA 1.2.4
X.org 1.20.12
Intel modesetting driver

Basically, running latest versions of everything I can think of that may be relevant.

Sound / Video / Driver Selection
I'm currently using ALSA (no pulse) w/ the Intel modesetting driver as it seems to get me "closest" to a working system.  Just for the record, I've also tried this using Pulse instead of ALSA, using the Intel DDX driver instead of modesetting, compiling the graphics and audio drives into the kernel vs. modules, with (I think) every combination of the previous options tested.  I tend to get slightly different behavior from each combination, but none work reliably and consistently.

Current Issues
I have Passthrough audio enabled for all options.  I can play basic DD and DTS 5.1 just fine.  I cannot play DTS-HD MA or TrueHD - I get silence, then Kodi (usually) crashes shortly after stopping the video (it did crash when capturing the provided log).  When reloading kodi, I get no further sound at all - not from UI sounds, not from previously working DD 5.1, etc.  I need to reboot in order to get sound again, then the same behavior occurs.

If I disable Passthrough audio, I get no sound for anything using one of the passthrough formats.  Ie., my FLAC music files still working, but I get silence from even basic DD 5.1.  If I try to play a DD/DTS track, then it stops playing audio altogether again until I reboot.

As noted above, if I try using the Intel driver rather than modesetting, or try using Pulse rather than ALSA, I get varying other types of breakage.  Sparing details here for the sake of brevity, but happy to provide more if one of those other options would be a better route for me.

Debug Files
https://boxdog.legroom.net/public/kodi-before.log
https://boxdog.legroom.net/public/kodi-after.log

debug-before.log covers this process on a fresh boot:

Navigating with UI sounds - works
Play FLAC audio file - works
Play DD 5.1 file w/ passthrough - works
Play DTS 5.1 file w/ passthrough - works
Noticed UI sounds stopped working
Play another DD 5.1 file w/ passthrough - still works
UI sounds resume working
Play DTS-HDMA file w/ passthrough - silence
After stopping video - crash

I'm also including debug-after.log, which does the following after restarting kodi following the above crash.  I get nothing but silence, but maybe some difference between it and the before log will provide a clue?

Navigating with UI sounds - silence
Play FLAC audio file - silence
Play DD 5.1 file w/ passthrough - silence


Anything obviously wrong with my system or config based on the logs?  If not...  any suggestions on most likely culprit?  Bug in kodi?  bug/incomplete support in passthrough audio support for this particular chipset?  If the latter, any suggestions on how to narrow it down to which component (kernel, ALSA, xorg driver, etc.)?

Appreciate any guidance.  Thanks.
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#2
Please use Kodi Paste Site for logs, split them into several parts if necessary.
Your links fail to open here.
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#3
(2021-07-20, 01:07)asavah Wrote: Please use Kodi Paste Site for logs, split them into several parts if necessary.
Your links fail to open here.

That's odd.  Links are correct as far as I can tell.  But regardless, certainly don't mind posting elsewhere if that's easier/preferred.  Please try these instead:

iqonizepon.kodi (paste) (before)
aqebapoxub.kodi (paste) (after)
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#4
I'm not sure whether this is the cause of your issue or not (it might be) but you are using an unsupported ffmpeg version.
Kodi 19.x Matrix should use a patched ffmpeg 4.3.2 from here https://github.com/xbmc/FFmpeg/tree/release/4.3-kodi .

Edit: on a side note your Kodi also seem to lack hardware decoding (vaapi) support, this is not related to your issue.
Gentoo is not officially supported by Team-Kodi however if someone has an any clues we will gladly help.
Given that you are using a potentially broken and unsupported configuration (ffmpeg) I think that your issue should be directed to your distro package/ebuild maintainer.
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#5
(2021-07-20, 01:27)asavah Wrote: I'm not sure whether this is the cause of your issue or not (it might be) but you are using an unsupported ffmpeg version.
Kodi 19.x Matrix should use a patched ffmpeg 4.3.2 from here https://github.com/xbmc/FFmpeg/tree/release/4.3-kodi .

Willing to try just about anything to make this work.  Let me see what I can do about using the patched version and will reply back.
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#6
(2021-07-20, 01:30)nitro322 Wrote: Let me see what I can do about using the patched version and will reply back.

Patches that are in that repo are not so important but nice to have.
The most important thing is ffmpeg api which Kodi heavily relies upon.
Kodi Nexus (master) 20.x does use 4.4 but a bunch of patches were required which were not and will not be backported to Matrix.

https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.gi...build#n274 makes Kodi use internal ffmpeg.
That should be useflag !system-ffmpeg , I forgot how exactly gentoo stuff works, haven't used it in many years ...
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#7
(2021-07-20, 01:42)asavah Wrote:
(2021-07-20, 01:30)nitro322 Wrote: Let me see what I can do about using the patched version and will reply back.

Patches that are in that repo are not so important but nice to have.
The most important thing is ffmpeg api which Kodi heavily relies upon.
Kodi Nexus (master) 20.x does use 4.4 but a bunch of patches were required which were not and will not be backported to Matrix.

https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.gi...build#n274 makes Kodi use internal ffmpeg.
That should be useflag !system-ffmpeg , I forgot how exactly gentoo stuff works, haven't used it in many years ...
I still generally get the same behavior with the patched version.  Updated log to verify it's using the version of ffmpeg you expect:
egepetuquy.kodi (paste)

I did observe one difference, but don't think it's related to the problem.  Kodi didn't crash this time until I tried playing another video after it enters that silent state after trying to play a DTS-HDMA video.  I think the difference is that I now have UI sounds disabled - was probably crashing when trying to play the next UI sound last time, vs. crashing when trying to play audio from the next video now.

Also, something that just occurred to me - I was running roughly the same version of everything on the NUC that I replaced.  Slightly older versions because I hadn't applied any recent updates since working on this new hardware (still on Kodi 19.0, e.g.), but running a nearly identical configuration for everything, including the same OS and USE flags.  So, this was working with +system-ffmpeg before the hardware change.  Just mentioning it for troubleshooting.
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#8
(2021-07-20, 01:27)asavah Wrote: Edit: on a side note your Kodi also seem to lack hardware decoding (vaapi) support, this is not related to your issue.
Gentoo is not officially supported by Team-Kodi however if someone has an any clues we will gladly help.
Given that you are using a potentially broken and unsupported configuration (ffmpeg) I think that your issue should be directed to your distro package/ebuild maintainer.

I just noticed your edit.  It's a fair point, and I did try posting for help on Gentoo's forums, but didn't get any help with this.  I understand you cannot officially support Gentoo because of the myriad configuration options involved, but would still appreciate any suggestions you (or the Kodi team) can provide just based on your much deeper understanding of how all this fits together.  Like I said earlier, this could certainly be a bug in some other component, and I'm happy to go file a bug report with them to chase that down, just don't understand the HDMI passthrough piece enough to know how to narrow that down.
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#9
Yep ffmpeg is correct now.
You may want to post a link to your dmesg, it may be useful for the developers.
So far I'm out of ideas, sorry, let's hope that someone with more knowledge or with access to the actual hardware reads this and can help.

You might want to take a look at https://github.com/thesofproject/sof which provides open sound firmware for new intel cpus,
the latest intel box I have access to is skylake so I've no idea whether sof is good and/or useful.
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#10
(2021-07-20, 15:35)asavah Wrote: Yep ffmpeg is correct now.
You may want to post a link to your dmesg, it may be useful for the developers.
So far I'm out of ideas, sorry, let's hope that someone with more knowledge or with access to the actual hardware reads this and can help.

You might want to take a look at https://github.com/thesofproject/sof which provides open sound firmware for new intel cpus,
the latest intel box I have access to is skylake so I've no idea whether sof is good and/or useful.

Thanks, asavah.  I did find that SOF link previously and I think I have that already setup as well.

Let me ask this - do you have a recommended distro known to be fully compatible with and supported by Kodi?  I don't mind wiping my Gentoo install and trying something like Fedora, Ubuntu, or maybe even LibreELEC and see how it behaves.  If it works there, we know it's an issue with how I've setup Gentoo.  If it still fails, well, then we're probably better able to troubleshoot as I'll be running with a much more familiar configuration

Any particular suggestions on that front?
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#11
For general purpose distros the Team officially supports only Ubuntu + https://kodi.wiki/view/Official_Ubuntu_PPA
But given that your hardware is new I'm not sure about the current state of support for your hardware in ubuntu kernels.

LibreELEC is also supported but their official forums may be a better place for LE specific questions.

Before wiping your current setup you could try running LibreELEC 10 beta from a USB stick and see how it behaves.

At this point I'm really not sure whether the problem is in Kodi, linux kernel, alsa or firmware.
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#12
Roger.  Appreciate the guidance.  Let me spend some time poking at this with an alternate distribution or two and will report back.
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#13
Quick update - I have Ubuntu 21.04 installed and can largely replicate my experience.  It's not identical since Ubuntu runs pulseaudio by default, but if I disable pulseaudio and force use of ALSA, I get the same experience of working AC3/DTS but broken TrueHD/DTS-HD MA followed by silence until reboot.

I actually have better luck with PulseAudio enabled as I can play all media files with audio, which is obviously nice, but I have a 7.2.4 speaker system, so kind of need passthrough working for the Atmos soundtracks.

Anyway, I'm burned out for the night.  Will provide some logs tomorrow.  Also want to try upgrading to kernel 5.13 (from 5.11) on Ubuntu to see if it makes any difference.
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