[killthewiseone]

Hi,
Looking for a solution to be able to always transcode ac3 without enabling passthrough.
Use case: To be able to playback ac3 encoded files while still retaining kodi's audio control and settings. My AVR does not behave desirably with passthrough and I would prefer Kodi to process all, even if it meant a small loss in quality.

There are several old/stale threads from users looking for DRC etc, this would solve that.

The archived feature request page in the wiki mentions the best way to get something done is to do it yourself, I'm almost certain I don't have the necessary coding skills - but I do wonder, if I were to attempt such a thing, if any of the Kodi devs see this perhaps could advise...
Reading through some of the audio engine code on github to try get an understanding, it appears before transcoding kodi checks for settings.passthrough && settings.ac3passthrough && settings.ac3transcode, etc...

Is there a chance the functionality for this already exist within the codebase, and is just limited by the settings? Or is there a LOT more going on under the hood than I realise, and enabling transcoding on an AC3 audio source would break things?

Would appreciate any advice.

[wsnipex]

disabling passthrough means kodi will decode all audio to PCM. Why would you need transcoding without passthrough?

[killthewiseone]

Hi @wsnipex, thanks for responding.
I used to have it set as described. But now due to hardware changes, I need to run over HDMI ARC, which won't carry multichannel PCM.
It requires compressed multichannel, and Kodi AC3 transcoding works brilliantly for this, except for on AC3 source files of course.

[Ant75]

Within Kodi I use audio Volume Amplification (Audio menu from the OSD when you pause a video) to improve the vocals and speech in movies. -10 limits the volume of big loud explosions and +15 amplification improves the vocals so you can actually hear more easily what is being said. Works really well, but Kodi must be set to process the audio for these options to be available. If the audio is being directly passed through to a receiver without any Kodi decode to PCM then these options will be greyed out and not available.

Since my receiver is not EARC compatible I can't send lossless PCM 5.1 or 7.1. Bummer. I use the AC3 Transcoder to get around the issue and send surround audio with Volume Amplification applied that way. Works really well when the source is NOT AC3. Kodi forces us to perform direct pass through for AC3! How can we turn direct AC3 pass through off AND continue to do AC3 transcoding?

My audio system does have a night mode which is supposed to do the same sort of thing as Kodi Volume Amplification, but it sounds really terrible to the point of being completely unusable. I have also tired another Kodi option called "Sync Playback to Display" which forces audio sync and therefore Kodi audio decode of source. It gets AC3 to AC3 transcoding working with Volume Amplification but causes new issues with the video which becomes jerky and difficult to watch.

I know this thread has been quiet for a while but I think problem free AC3 to AC3 transcoding is only a millimeter away and would be well worth the small effort required to add a simple menu setting option to allow us to engage it. Any help or ideas anyone?