OS X Surround Sound Problems
#1
Hi,

I've been a supporter of XBMC for years and its always been the very best media centre software.
High prise to all the developers for such a fine piece of work.

However, since the introduction of Frodo i now experience audio problems when playing back any media file that has a digital soundtrack, DD, DTS, AAC ... etc
I have tried all versions of Frodo .0/.1/.2 but always the same problem.

My Mac is connected to my AV amp via optical TOS link. when i playback DTS or DD audio all i get is loud white noise, AAC is totally silent.
Both OSX and XBMC are set to use Optical Out, my amp is a Dennon AVR 1909 with 5.1 speaker setup.

In previous versions of XBMC (Eden) everything has worked great with excellent audio. But now i just can not get any surround sound.
I have read on the forum of audio issues in XBMC running on OSX but am not clear if these are the same issues
I have tried the lastest nightly build with no success, by turning off the two digital amp capable settings in system/audio/playback i can get stereo sound ok but
that is not what i bought a £1000 AV system for.

Does any one have any tips ?
I thought that Digital soundtracks such as DD (Dolby Digital) and DTS are sent un-touched to the amp for decoding so i dont really understand why these dont work anymore
I believe that AAC has to be processed by XBMC but some sort of apple issue stops it from working ?

One final observation, with the latest nightly build, the option for selecting digital sound capable amps has vanished from the audio playback settings, is this normal ?

I would appreciate any help or at least a definitive answer that XBMC is currently broken with regards to digital surround playback.
Perhaps a sticky stating this is in order.

I am running OSX Lion 10.7.5, i can not update to Mountain Lion because Apple dropped support for Intel Core Duo CPU's with the introduction of 10.8.x

Cheers
Jay

EDIT: 17:20 - 10th July

I just Installed PLEX OSX Server (and Client.
The Plex Client APP plays all my content with no problems at all.
The configuration screen for audio is almost identical to XBMC, options for DTS & DD capable amp are enabled
All Codec's seem to be processed correctly and uses pass through with DD & DTS soundtracks, AAC plays as Dolby Digital and works great.
Just like XBMC Eden used to.

So i can only asume that the problem lies with XBMC and is a software issue not a hardware one

I personally prefer XBMC for its customisable skins and plug-ins .. etc but for the moment i guess i have to use PLEX
until XBMC is fixed.

Any thoughts ?
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#2
1. for getting the full options back you need to look into the left slide menu in settings which allows you to set the level of shown settings. Set it to advanced and you should see the passthrough options again.

Then try the following.

1. In audio midi setup set your speaker setup to 2 channel and 5.1 if possible (i am not sure if 5.1 is possible - so if only 2 channel stereo is available - try that ...)
2. In XBMC set speaker config to 2.0 channels aswell
3. Enable DTS capable receiver
4. Enable AC3 capable receiver
5. Disable LPCM capable receiver

Lets see if those settings work for you ...
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#3
(2013-07-10, 23:04)Memphiz Wrote: 1. for getting the full options back you need to look into the left slide menu in settings which allows you to set the level of shown settings. Set it to advanced and you should see the passthrough options again.

Then try the following.

1. In audio midi setup set your speaker setup to 2 channel and 5.1 if possible (i am not sure if 5.1 is possible - so if only 2 channel stereo is available - try that ...)
2. In XBMC set speaker config to 2.0 channels aswell
3. Enable DTS capable receiver
4. Enable AC3 capable receiver
5. Disable LPCM capable receiver

Lets see if those settings work for you ...

Hi Memphiz, thanks for your post.

Ok i tried your suggestions,

In audio midi setup the only option for multichannel speaker configuration was 2.0 all the other options 5.1, 7.1 .. etc were greyed out, so i set it to 2.0 as you suggested.

Next I downloaded the latest nightly build, installed it and enabled the advanced configurations options (thanks for the tip)
I set the audio options as your post..

When trying to play any media file with digital soundtrack DTS or DD no sound was sent to my amp (no input stream detected), also the video playback for these media files was very slow, a few frames will play then maybe a half second pause then a few frames ... etc !!

However when playing AAC files a stereo audio stream was sent to my amp but not multi-channel.

What ever i tried i can not get any sound for DTS or DD, AAC plays as stereo

Plex works perfect and plays everything as you would expect including multi channel AAC through the optical S/PDIF connection.

It would seem that the problem lies with XBMC and not any hardware or OSX issues.

I would be happy to try anything else to help the devs get this sorted, very frustrating for all i image.

Cheers
Jay

EDIT - Reinstalling Frodo 12.2, DTS & DD video playback are fine - no stutter but just white noise for audio as original post
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#4
Mountain Lion works fine on Core 2 Duo machines, i use it myself on 2009 Macbook and 2010 Mac mini.

If you get white noise it sounds like (pun intended) sound is sent somewhere where it cannot be decoded. What's you output device set to in XBMC settings?

Edit: and only now i noticed that you say Core Duo which is a completely different processor. Well, welcome to the world of OSX audio issues.
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#5
(2013-07-11, 17:11)toiva Wrote: Mountain Lion works fine on Core 2 Duo machines, i use it myself on 2009 Macbook and 2010 Mac mini.

If you get white noise it sounds like (pun intended) sound is sent somewhere where it cannot be decoded. What's you output device set to in XBMC settings?

Edit: and only now i noticed that you say Core Duo which is a completely different processor. Well, welcome to the world of OSX audio issues.

Hi toiva,

This is a little off topic but unfortunately it is true, the system i run XBMC on is a mid 2008 Mac Mini, Intel Core Duo 2.0Ghz, Apple only support ML on Mac Mini 2009 onwards.See here :-

Apple Mountain Lion Requirements

I've tried several times to install ML but every time it fails, there are a few hacks out there which work on iMacs but not the Mac Mini, I tried.
I am more than happy with the performance of the box, and I really don't need any of the additional features of ML as It is only used as a Home Theatre System.
I only use 720P content as 1080P is pushing it a little beyond its capabilities, and to be honest its difficult to see the difference of a good 720P rip vs 1080P from a distance
at least with my eyes is it.

Cheers
Jay
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#6
In case it helps, these are the settings that work for me, giving me full surround sound.

*** In OSX System Preferences > Sound, Output tab:

I select "Digital Out: Optical digital-out port", but it doesn't seem to make a difference what is selected here.

*** In OSX application Audio-MIDI Setup:

Audio Devices window
Choose Built-In Output
Format: 44100.0 Hz 2ch-24bit Integer

*** In XBMC, System/Settings/Video output:
Display Mode: Full Screen #1
Display: 1920 x 1080p
Blank other displays: ON
Vertical blank sync: Always enabled
Enable LCD/VFD: OFF

*** In XBMC, System/Settings/Audio output:

Audio output: Optical/Coax
Speaker Configuration: 2.0
Output stereo to all speakers: Off
Dolby Digital (AC3) and DTS capable receiver: yes to both
Audio output device: Built-in Output
LibreELEC 10.0.4 * ViMediaManager or TinyMediaManager | Raspberry pi 4b
Sharing media from NAS via NFS (optical out to receiver, HDMI to TV) | TV remote with CEC / Bluetooth keyboard
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#7
(2013-07-12, 18:29)Glorious1 Wrote: In case it helps, these are the settings that work for me, giving me full surround sound.
....

Hi Glorious1,

Thanks for your settings, i tried them but it didn't help, same problem.

A few things that I've found out.

At a Hardware Level the S/PDIF output is always active, no matter what you select as your primary (analogue) output, this is true for almost all devices including widows PC's, sky box .. etc

S/PDIF / TOS only supports a dual channel PCM audio stream, the multi channel decode is handled by your AV amp (as long as you have the pass through options enabled)
In other words it should not really matter what you set the OSX and XBMC speaker settings to, all that XBMC has to do is to forward the stream to the correct handler, hardware will do the rest.
AAC/AC3 is different and requires some pre processing.

And this is what i don't understand, somewhere along the way XBMC is screwing up those PCM digital data streams.
Like i said PLEX works great (as did EDEN)
PLEX has the same exact audio options as XBMC, from what i understand PLEX is based on XBMC so how can that work and XBMC not ?

I guess we'll get to the bottom of it eventually, its only since the introduction of Frodo that the problem has arisen.

Fingers crossed that a fix is found in time for the Gotham stable realease.

Jay


as
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#8
I gave up on trying to get this to work, i suspect that the problem was to do with Lion & the revision of my MAC

I sold the Mini MAC and built a CustoMAC based on a Gigabyte H77N Motherboard and Intel i3 3225 CPU.
Latest Mountain Lion - OSX 10.8.4 , SSD, 8GB RAM, kept it simple and basic.

Had a few issues initially with frame stutter after 45 mins but the problem is resolved by setting the AUDIO
outputs to HDMI. see here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=148243&page=31

Running stock Frodo 12.2 - all is Perfect

This thread can be closed now

Cheers
Jay
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