[mister_eff]

I have a 4.1 system and play music on Kodi with an Nvidia Shield. My music library is mostly 2-channel stereo, but I have some 5.0 and 5.1 music from SACD and blu-ray rips. I've converted everything to FLAC so I am not dealing with any passthrough codecs (or DSD complications). I'm having trouble finding a universal setting to output my music the way I want. If I go into Settings->System->Audio, this is what I have found happens:

What I want:

• 2.0 Music gets output as 2.0 Music. The receiver sees a stereo signal and applies surround processing (Dolby Surround/Pro Logic, DTS Neural X/Neo)
  
• 5.0 Music gets output as 5.0 Music (5.1 would also be okay because the receiver handles LFE and will send low frequency info to sub anyway.)
  
• 5.1 Music gets output as 5.1 Music
  

What I have found:

Fixed 5.1 Output:

• 2.0 Music gets output as 5.1 but with "empty" surround, center, and LFE channels, so receiver does not do anything surround processing (Dolby Surround/Pro Logic, DTS Neural X/Neo)
  
• 5.0 Music gets output as 5.1 but with "empty LFE. This is fine because receiver handles LFE and will send low frequency info to sub anyway.
  
• 5.1 Music gets output as 5.1, correctly.
  

Best Match 5.1 Output:

• 2.0 Music gets output as 2.0 Music, correctly. Receiver will apply surround processing (Dolby Surround/Pro Logic, DTS Neural X/Neo)
  
• 5.0 Music gets output as 2.0 Music, so surround and center channels are "lost"
  
• 5.1 Music gets output as 5.1 Music, correctly.
  

Also, even though I have a 4.1 system, I tell Kodi I have a 5.1 system, otherwise it always outputs 2.0.

To get Kodi to work right, I leave it on "Best Match" unless I know I want to listen to a 5.0 album. Then I switch it. It's fine but it'd be nice if there was a setting to do what I want. I haven't found one.

[jjd-uk]

It could be that the Android OS itself on the Shield to blame as it might not like 5.0 PCM, as what you want would work on Windows/Linux with Best Match set. You could experiment with transcoding to see if converting to Dolby Digital helps, to do this leave as Best Match, set Channels to 2.0 then enable transcoding under Dolby Digital.

[black_eagle]

I think an up-to-date nightly might have this fixed and do what you want.  I do know @fritsch made some changes in this area, allowing extra things for both Shield and Firestick 4K Max v2 -> detailed thread here

[HomerJau]

Yes this was fixed in Omega a couple weeks ago, including playing quad FLAC.

[mister_eff]

Thank you for the replies. Would these fixes be in a beta by now or would it just be the nightly?

[HomerJau]

Nightly (unless Beta 3 has been released?)

You can also get 24bit multichannel pcm (FLAC & Wav) output from some Android devices like FTV 4K Max with a related fix done at same time. Previously only NVidia Shield played 24bit MCH pcm, everything else was 16 bit.