[psi_88]

Running latest Kodi 19 .4.0 on Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS

I have good sound output via HDMI (using pulse audio from my Caicos HDMI audio (Radeon HD 7450), but even setting it directly to HDMI Caicos changes nothing..

I'm using ARC to send the sound through TV to my Panasonic soundbar, nothing has changed with my setup since Kodi 17..

I'm no longer able to keep the soundbar alive with the "Keep audio device alive option" on always, and/or ticking "the send low volume sound" option..

Has anyone else noticed this, it used to be fine with kodi 18... Now if I leave a video paused or am in the home screen doors more than about 10 minutes, the soundbar hours into standby...

If I turn the soundbar to max volume when paused I can hear no faint whistle, though maybe it's out of my human ears audible hrtz range?

I've checked my hardware setting in Ubuntu and the Caicos is still alive and not into sleep..

Do I need to change to ALSA or am I missing something, is the feature just broken now... ?

I know others have got round this by using a periodic Cron job in the background, but I have no idea where to start with this...

Please help..

[fritsch]

Code is still there and was not touched since roughly 3+ years. Do you also get that behaviour in the menus? E.g. 8 seconds after latest audio sample the soundbar turns off?

[psi_88]

The soundbar itself has a timeout of about 10 minutes without audio, then it shuts down.

but yes it will timeout and the shutdown happens whether I'm in menu, or in paused video...

I don't understand why the codes is no longer working..

[fritsch]

As you seem to use pulse, the pulse log (you need to find out how your distribution logs it) will tell if the device is closed and why.

[fritsch]

Okay. Broken for ALSA and pulseaudio. Seems AudioEngine does not add silence / noise packages anymore at all ...

You can verify that ALSA is broken as well by doing: KODI_AE_SINK=ALSA kodi

I tested with nightly - so broken since long time, should be broken on other OSs, e.g. windows / android as well.

[fritsch]

Please file a bug, it's a regression.

[3dfx]

I can confirm, the last nightly (21.0+git20230109.0301-8c2aafb6d4-0~jammy) fixes the issue.
But you have to set a numeric timeout, the option "never" doesn't work, but that's fine for me regarding it was totally broken

[fritsch]

Never: Means, it should "never" keep it alive
Always: It should always output silence.

And through to some Settings Run-Time Update glitch, you might want to try to set it to Never and restart kodi.