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MistaKa0s · 2013-01-31, 06:31

I hope this'll help out users with issues with Pulseaudio and HDMI passthrough.
Note: I only tried this with Fedora 18 running XBMC Frodo rc3 (from RPMfusion), not sure if it applies to any other distribution.

Symptoms:
* No sound when using passthrough regardless of codec - DTS, AC3, Dolby etc
* Video will 'stutter' as it's dropping a lot of frames.
* Sound when passthrough is disabled and using software decoding.

Fix:
It appears you need to explicitly enable passthrough for pulseaudio using 'pavucontrol'
1. $ sudo yum install pavucontrol
2. Run pavucontrol as the user running xbmc
3. Tick the checkboxes on the output devices tab that your receiver/passthrough device supports.

The lack of passthrough audio had me stumped until I found those options within pavucontrol. Ticking those options enabled DTS, AC3 and Dolby Digital tracks to be passed to the receiver.
I haven't found a config file or commandline setting to change without using the GUI yet.

nickr · 2013-01-31, 06:37

I believe the frodo RC ubuntu builds were built without pulse support anyway. Don't know about frodo final.

un1versal · 2013-01-31, 10:45

@nickr

Dito for Frodo final, this is a case when pulse is enabled in build it wont work with people that dont have pulse installed and thats a lot of users. E.g. Im one of them, which despises pulse anyway.

uNi

nickr · 2013-01-31, 21:06

At the same time, anyone using xbmc on a machine that doubles as a desktop will welcome the above solution.

un1versal · 2013-01-31, 23:46

I can think of one person that wont, nothing will Wink

, In fact now that its been mentioned, probably jinxed it.

uNi

**enolive** · 2013-02-01, 00:40

this sounds like a possible solution to my problem.

What do I need to do to get Frodo to support pulseaudio? I don't remember Eden ever being so picky (pulseaudio and passthrough both worked), I must admit I used the version from the debian repos though ;-)

un1versal · 2013-02-01, 00:56

Well thers a solution two replies further up about it, go read it and be enlightened.

uNi

nickr · 2013-02-01, 02:38

Audio Engine (new in frodo) is a completely new sound landscape. what worked in Eden is effectively no measure of what works in frodo.

damocles · 2013-02-11, 14:45

What fixed that problem for me, was activating passthrough on all soundcards. Even the unused ones.

SorryGoFish · 2013-02-14, 15:30

(2013-02-11, 14:45)damocles Wrote: What fixed that problem for me, was activating passthrough on all soundcards. Even the unused ones.

Could you elaborate on this? What does it mean to activate passthrough. Is this an XBMC setting, or something that's configured elsewhere? Thanks.

abompard · 2013-02-16, 15:29

This procedure does work for me, however it has the following disadvantages :
1. all output is sent to the SPDIF output, not only XBMC but also the system sounds, media player, etc
2. the movies in DTS or AAC, that my receiver doesn't decode, are decoded to stereo, unlike Eden which converted the format to AC3 on-the-fly

Can anyone can confirm this ? Any idea how to fix this ?

nickr · 2013-02-16, 22:59

Do you really need pulse?

abompard · 2013-02-17, 01:57

Yes, it's actually pretty useful to me, since XBMC is running on my main desktop. For example, thanks to Pulseaudio, the sound is automatically routed to my USB headset when I plug it in, and it becomes my default mic.
Besides, Eden managed to use SPDIF with Pulseaudio, and removing it wouldn't solve #2.