Win Help me get my audio settings right. I fix one and lose something else!
#1
I think I'm missing the correct settings and it's driving me mad.

I have a windows 7 based media centre running XBMC (Aeon Nox, 12.2 Frodo) as it's main role for music and HD/ SD movies stored upon the hard discs and also via the DVD drive, other than that, I sometimes browse the net on it from within XBMc via Google Chrome and XBMC's Advance Launcher, or minimising/ quitting XBMC and running Google Chrome solely from windows. It has a singular HDMI lead running from the media centre to my Denon Amp, then that has a singular HDMI lead going up to the TV.


I seem to be having issues in regard to audio settings and the issues that they create.

I watch Blu Rays from within XBMC with AnyDVD running in the background. I had a few audio issues and after some help and reading, I set the (Settings/ System/ Audio) audio settings as HDMI, 5.1 and Audio Output Device and the Passthrough Output Device to WASAPI.

Now, when I want to watch catch up's or stream films from online using my internet browse (Google Chome in this case), I sometimes quit XBMC and load Chrome from the start menu, sometimes I just minimise XBMC and load Chrome from the start menu, or at other times (ideally if it works) use the advanced launcher to load up Google Chrome which it does load just fine. At some point I had issues with audio while trying to watch online streams, or XBMC not having audio. One or the other.

I then followed instructions to go to (Control Panel, Audio, Properties) and set 'Exclusive' mode under my sound cards properties. This seem to fix the issues I was having at the time. But I guess gives XBMC exclusive use of the audio? But still using Chrome via the advance launcher still doesn't work, I guess it is technically launching a separate program.
So I quit XBMC and tried Chrome, still no audio. I could only get Chrome to work with audio by unticking the 'Exclusive' options.

I then hadn't watched a film for ages, so I loaded one up from the library. The film was slow and choppy with no audio. I managed to track this down to the WASAPI setting. I changed one of these to Direct Audio and I was going again with smooth film and audio.



Can I get everything to have audio whenever it wants it? XBMC to work fine and also when minimising XBMC, Chrome will have audio.
XBMC to have HD audio in 5.1.
Audio to work and the film to display smoothly with no juddering.

I currently have audio but I'm sure I've made something worse. I can normally get it working by fiddling, but I can't seem to get everything going at once. Am I missing something, I seem to be going around and around in circles with no real perfect setup.

Help please!
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#2
XBMC will lock the audio depending on the audio setting in system/settings/system Audio.
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#3
(2012-07-01, 20:32)kricker Wrote: XBMC will lock the audio depending on the audio setting in system/settings/system Audio.

I've just re-written my first post, but why does something have to lock the audio? Why can't everything just have the audio, and making sure only one thing is running, only one aspect playing through my speakers?
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#4
More detailed response in the sticky but I think it likely you'll need to install Frodo v12.0
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#5
How stable is the nightly build (13?), worth upgrading to that or will I lost something else in the meantime? Anything worth having in it?
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#6
Again, I'd advise 12.0 for stability and on a Windows system you won't be losing any critical bug fixes rolling back.

Stability is hard to gage as it depends on usage, you could try the next monthly alpha in portable mode so it's a completely self-contained installation and doesn't affect your existing Frodo installation.
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#7
Portable mode sounds good. Although if I decided to rollback to version 12, how would I go about finding it? Is it under downloads, monthly builds, then Alpha 7 Frodo (the last v12 listed?)

Thanks again.
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#8
Keep your v12 as it is, but maybe just rename directory it's installed to xbmc-frodo or similar so you can identify it.

Download Gotham alpha from http://mirrors.xbmc.org/snapshots/win32/ with a new v13 Alpha 7 due next week then install it to a separate directory e.g. xbmc-gotham.

Once installed create a shortcut to "xbmc.exe" then open properties of shortcut and change Target to "xbmc.exe" -p.

When you start with the shortcut a new Portable-data directory is created then close xbmc, then copy all Userdata from Frodo install into here if you don't want to start from scratch.

Doing this means you can have both Frodo & Gotham on the PC at the same time and which operate completely independently of each other, so you can easily switch back & forth between versions if you wish.
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#9
Cheers, I'll try this out over the weekend. Many thanks.
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#10
Out of interest, has the latest v13 release solved any of this?
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#11
(2013-09-13, 18:19)Gingerbread Man Wrote: Out of interest, has the latest v13 release solved any of this?

best if you tell us
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#12
Fair point. I'm a bit timid in downloading it to then find more issues and to watch the missus get wound up in the process of it not working.
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#13
Run it in portable mode. It doesn't harm your current install Smile
If it works you keep it, if not you can still use Frodo without problems.
Do backup the current userdata to be sure.
Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting, read this first
Interested in seeing some YouTube videos about Kodi? Go here and subscribe
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Help me get my audio settings right. I fix one and lose something else!0