Fire TV stick - pcm-float output for hi-res audio
#1
Hi everyone,

I am a long time Kodi user from Italy for both audio and video, started with a Minix X7 and now using a Fire Tv 3rd gen (2020).
I recently subscribed to Qobuz for enjoying hi-res audio using Kodi as upnp renderer; as Firestick outputs DD+ (eac3 48khz) by default for non passthrough content, I'd like to force it to output PCM up to 24bit and 192khz.
So far I achieved (by loggin with adb shell logcat):
- Fixed output 7.1 192khz: AUDIOINFO: audio_output: devices: hdmi, format: pcm-16, sample_rate: 192000, channels: 8 -> seems understandable to me due to Android limit of 16bit for multichannel - sound quality very good but downsampled to 16 bit
- Fixed output 7.1 96khz: AUDIOINFO: audio_output: devices: hdmi, format: pcm-16, sample_rate: 96000, channels: 8 -> same sound quality to my ear also for 192khz content
- Fixed output with ANY OTHER channel and sampling setting, Best match & Optimized: AUDIOINFO: audio_output: devices: hdmi, format: eac3, sample_rate: 48000, channels: 6 -> seems a sort of fallback to default DD+

I' d like to add that setting Firestick to PCM only does not change this behavior, only difference is that default fallback is AUDIOINFO: audio_output: devices: hdmi, format: pcm-16, sample_rate: 48000, channels: 6

If I understand correctly the limitations of Android and Fire TV, the important thing is that so far I cannot output format: pcm-float, sample_rate: 192000, channels: 2, which Firestick is capable of because that's what I get with Amazon Music HD app (but I would like to stick with Qobuz).

Since I use a Chromecast built-in speaker, my only alternative is using CC (up to 24bit/96khz), but I lose gapless playback.

I hope to have explained everything properly,
Thank you,
Guido
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