[Iscb2015]

I have this morning tried the SPMC version of the software (both 14.1 and 13.4 versions) and they both exhibit the same issue with the audio pass through.

I know that some people have this working - can someone that does give me details of the cabling (type HDMI, Optical Audio, etc and where the cable from the Fire TV goes, e.g. direct to Amp or via TV) and Amp they use ? I'm thinking that I may be able to get some technical specs for the two Amps (theirs and mine) and see if there are any significant differences.

Cheers

Ian

[Koying]

Mine is directly connected to a cheapo Samsung Home Theater with a plain HDMI cable and works fine.

[Iscb2015]

Thanks.

I have found a work-around … Having connected the Fire TV to the Amp with an Optical cable (in addition to the HDMI) and configured the Fire TV to send Dolby Digital over Optical, and the Amp to use the optical connection for audio, it now works as expected.

I guess this wouldn't work for Mucrief as I don't thingk the Fire TV stick has an optical out.

Cheers

Ian

[muncrief]

Yes Iscb2015, because I have a Fire TV Stick the optical output is not an option. But I just wanted to check in and let everyone know I've not given up though. I realized with no intricate knowledge of Alsa and Pulseaudio (and not being willing to wait for the eternity it is taking developers to fix it) I wasn't going to have much chance of figuring out, from the outside, what's wrong with the Kodi (and Linux in general) audio code. So I archived my Windows 7 system and installed Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty) so I could run the tools necessary to see what was going on with Linux (which is what Android is). I was not surprised to find that HDMI 5.1 didn't work on a Linux desktop computer either, while my optical SPDIF does.

This is a very, very, sad state of affairs for Linux. These past few days I've read hundreds of posts, some from five years or more ago, about digital HDMI multi-channel not working. That was surprising. It seems that in the end most people have actually gone out and bought new equipment (AVRs, adapters, etc.) so they could use SPDIF. And the oddest part is that under most all circumstances Linux is accurately detecting the attached equipment's capabilities, it's just incapable of making it work.

And yet Windows always works, with a universe of interconnected devices.

Well, the engineer in me just can't let this stand. I'm going nuclear on this issue, and I will figure out what's wrong, at a fundamental level, and fix it. I can't fathom why the experienced developers can't make things work, but it's going to be very embarrassing for them when a novice from the outside has to come in and do their job. I hope they consider this a challenge, and get their rear ends in gear, because Muncrief is coming. I may not be back for awhile, but when I do return I will return victorious.

As Arnold Schwarzenegger so eloquently said, I'll be back!

[Koying]

Android has a linux base, but the audio stuff goes via an Android API, so no direct relation, here.

FYI, 5.1 work fine for me in Linux on a Cubox-i, too.

[muncrief]

Yes, I understand that Android and Linux sound works for many people, and it also doesn't work for at least as many. That's the problem. Windows works for everyone, on every device. Linux/Android will never win the hearts and minds of the people if all we ever hear is "Well, it works for me"

The sound problems with Linux and now Android are legend, and the number of people put off by it are incalculable. Unless we want to forever be dominated by Microsoft, Linux and Android have to be as rock solid as Windows.

I'm not certain why it isn't, but I'm going to do my best to find out why.

[Iscb2015]

I have a lot of admiration for you Muncrief and I applaud your efforts, I hope you do find the issue and manage to resolve it in the not too distant future. Like you I find it immensely frustrating when people say "it works for me" - that said the problem is that everyone has a slightly different hardware configuration and it seems that this is part of the problem.

[Ned Scott]

Yes, I understand that Android and Linux sound works for many people, and it also doesn't work for at least as many. That's the problem. Windows works for everyone, on every device. Linux/Android will never win the hearts and minds of the people if all we ever hear is "Well, it works for me"

The sound problems with Linux and now Android are legend, and the number of people put off by it are incalculable. Unless we want to forever be dominated by Microsoft, Linux and Android have to be as rock solid as Windows.

I'm not certain why it isn't, but I'm going to do my best to find out why.

Actually, what Koying just said seems to have completely gone over your head. He's telling you that when people say "Linux" they are not talking about Android. There is no relation between Linux-based desktop OSes and Android when it comes to audio. Before you shit all over our developers for not finding a solution to a problem, it would be good to actually understand what is being said in the conversation.

No one is saying "works for me" to brush people off. It simply means that we cannot reproduce the issue ourselves and will need more information about the user's specific setup. Even then, when it comes to Android, sometimes there really is not a solution. There are even times when the limitation is in the physical hardware itself. If you want to take "works for me" as some kind of personal insult, then you've missed the point entirely.

[Koying]

Yes, I understand that Android and Linux sound works for many people, and it also doesn't work for at least as many. That's the problem. Windows works for everyone, on every device. Linux/Android will never win the hearts and minds of the people if all we ever hear is "Well, it works for me"

Actually, officially, Android does not support anything else than audio 2.0 (up to Lollipop, anyway). So, by definition, everything else is some kind of an hack and/or finding "the right combination" of firmware, software, hardware and wiring.

We cannot access the underlying hardware / device drivers, so whether it works or not depends first-hand on the droid device firmware. You're covered there with AFTV (stick) as it is proven to work.

Next, as we cannot access the HDMI hardware, we cannot in any way send the magic packet that tells your AVR that it will receive DD/DTS passthrough packets rather than PCM.
Here lies most of the issues. Some AVR's are just smarter than other and *detects* that passthrough packets are coming rather than PCM.
Mine does, yours apparently doesn't.

Plex and Netflix works? Great. In a perfect world where everything is open-source, we'd check their sources and do the same thing as they do.
Unfortunately, there are not open-source so we *don't* know what they do.
Are they using a proprietary API? A super-secret sysfs trick? No idea.

If you find out, we'll be more than happy to apply the same trick.

P.S. Saying that Linux exhibits the same issue is just not true. There (at least with ALSA) we *can* send the magic packet (if the underlying kernel is ok, of course)
Thus, the same device might do passthrough fine in Linux but not in Android.

[muncrief]

Whoa there, it was not my intention to insult the Kodi developers, I was simply issuing a friendly challenge. Engineers do that. In fact I think Kodi is awesome, and am very grateful to the developers for creating it. I think they did an incredible job.

However, the issues with Linux and Android sound are long standing, and they do have much in common. In fact when I installed Ubuntu 14.04 the HDMI passthrough failed in the exact same way as it did on Android. And all the Ubuntu video/audio apps I tried failed as well, again in the same exact way. It was only yesterday that I discovered it was Pulse Audio causing the problems, and Android often runs Pulse Audio as well. It's my suspicion that the Netflix and Amazon developers have bypassed Pulse Audio somehow, and that's why passthrough works for most everyone with their apps. However it looks like sideloaded apps have to use an API that runs through Pulse Audio.

And today I discovered that there's a well known bug with Pulse Audio when enumerating HDMI devices that causes passthrough to fail. At first it was thought to only plague Nvidia cards, but it was later discovered to affect other cards as well, especially those with multiple HDMI outputs. There are supposed to be versions of Pulse Audio that have fixed this problem, and that's what I'm looking into tomorrow.

My goal is simply to make Kodi sound work on everything, for everyone. Even if it's not Kodi code that's causing the problem, and at this point I don't think it is, I want to find workarounds for the problem so everyone can enjoy the beauty that is Kodi, on every device.

I sincerely apologize to anyone who took offense at my comments.

[muncrief]

I forgot to tell you that I posted a workaround for people having problems to get HDMI passthrough working on Linux Kodi in the Linux section today. It's three simple scripts that work around the Pulse Audio problem. With them Kodi does HDMI passthrough perfectly, and sounds awesome!

[Koying]

Did I look like I felt insulted? No, no issue.
Just a bit of frustration, probably

[atoneapone]

Getting back on topic. I just purchased a FireTV box this week, rooted it and installed Kodi.
But I was disappointed to also find the same problem getting White Static sound using Kodi mentioned by others here. I don't have Amazon prime or Netflix so I have yet to experience anything with 5.1 dolby digital on my AFTV. I only have HuluPlus and everything is 2.0 stereo from there.

I'm very thankful that Iscb2015 and muncrief continued trying to get down to a solution to the FireTV Kodi 5.1 Dolby Digital problem. I noted the workaround solution by Iscb2015 (who also has an AFTV box like me): he connected AFTV hdmi to an AV system & the optical digital output to the AV system, and then 5.1 dolby digital and 5.1 DTS work on Kodi with his workaround.
Unfortunately for me, I haven't had a chance to confirm this to work, since I only own an older AV system without the HDMI inputs. MY AV system only has digital optical inputs. --UPDATE--SEE Post Below (Everything works via Digital Optical!)

So I have my FireTV HDMI directly hooked up to a Sony HDTV. And the digital optical going to an early 2000s Technics 5.1 DTS/DD AV system. And I still hear White Static noise. Maybe there's some type of crosstalk of HDMI audio and Digital optical audio outputting simultaneously from AFTV. If we could disable the HDMI audio whenever the digital optical output is used, then maybe this would fix everything. A software script written into Kodi may be needed...unsure really.
Hopefully a solution is found with Kodi + AFTV HDMI 5.1 audio.

Update:
I also found aftv boxes Surround Sound discussed here:
>>http://forum.xda-developers.com/fire-tv/...4791/page2

[atoneapone]

Well, White Static problem solved for me using a dated AV system. [My setup-HDMI from AFTV going directly to HDTV, and Digital optical output to AV system]: Quick answer-Turn the HDTV volume all the way down and only use the audio from AV system.
It's not a perfect solution since White Static is still there if you turn up the HDTV volume. Some Modern AV systems made in last 10 years having HDMI inputs may disable the static automatically while using digital optical.(as mentioned by Iscb2015's workaround.)

My Solution: (Based on link above to get settings right.)
In Kodi/XBMC System Settings: Under Audio Output Settings
number of channels: select 2.0
Then select ON for Enable Passthrough, DD capable receiver, enable DD transcoding, DTS capable receiver.
That's it!

I get DD&DTS 5.1.
There is still White Static noise but it only comes from HDMI (when HDMI is hooked directly to HDTV), while the Digital Optical is outputting perfectly 5.1 DD/DTS sound (with no static noise).
I've successfully used KODI to play MKVs having DTS/DD 5.1 over the network, via USB (with Stickmount root), and streaming video from Genesis TV shows having DD 5.1 .

Conclusion: KODI on FireTV box is outputting proper 5.1 digital surround sound via digital optical!
5.1 always worked. But there is simultaneous audio pass through from the HDMI & from Digital Optical output. In regards to FireTV units, maybe the Kodi team can disable HDMI audio passthrough automatically whenever digital optical passthrough is being used.

[_DNA_]

Optical doesn't always work from the AFTV. For me it seems to be an issue of the receiver and amazon android device not talking to each other correctly. This is the case for my old sony receiver. The way I know this is that I can't get 5.1 AC3 sound from movies streamed using the Amazon Fire TV native app either. DTS works fine. I think it might require a firmware upgrade of the AFTV but frankly, I think it's going to be easier for me to just buy a new receiver at some point than to hope amazon will fix this issue for the tiny number of people using ancient receivers like me. Sad because this receiver has always worked with other devices.