Sound issue with Gothem on Linux
#1
Hi,

I'm having an issue with sound on my Linux setup. on surround sound sources (videos) i only hear the background music/noise, but not the voices.

I'm running Arch Linux, and i've installed xbmc-git via AUR (last updated 2/4/14, here)
I have a gforce 210 card, with hdmi > stereo > TV (NVIDIA Corporation GT218 [GeForce 210])
I have the "official" nvidia-304xx 304.119 from the pacman repositories.
My stereo is 5.1 surround sound

On my old setup with frodo (Linux Mint Debian Edition), i would select optical/coax for audio type, even though the audio was going through HDMI. If it was set to HDMI I would have this same issue, sound coming through, but no voices. On gothem, there is no option to choose optical/coax.

If i set xbmc to 2.1 speakers, i hear the audio track, but it cuts out the surround speakers.

This only affects videos that have surround sound, other stereo videos sound fine.

Let me know if there are any logs that i can get that would help.
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#2
You won't get much help from the devs without a debug log, and they are the experts. But let me see if I can give you some ideas to try.

It sounds to me like your AV receiver ( I assume that is what you mean by "stereo" since it apparently accepts HDMI and has 5.1 sound) does not like multichannel LPCM. I used to use OSX and setting the audio output to optical was a trick to disable LPCM. Try this:

If you have pulseaudio running, open pavucontrol and set your output device to HDMI stereo. Then, in XBMC, set the audio output to pulse default, 2.0 channels. enable audio passthrough and enable AC3. Also enable AC3 transcoding.

If you don't have pulse audio, the only difference from the above instructions should be that you have to select your HDMI device as the XBMC audio output.

This should give you full surround if your AV receiver can handle AC3. If your receiver can't handle multichannel LPCM or AC3, it's a weird one, and may not really be able to handle surround sound.

If none of this works for you, you will have to provide more information about your "stereo" and your audio settings in XBMC, and remember that the devs will want to see a debug log.

Edit: You may need to update to the latest nightly to get passthrough working with pulse audio. There was a bug (at least in Ubuntu) with that until just about a week ago.
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#3
Thanks for the reply @RipT!

Yes, i meant AV receiver when i said "stereo". I hadn't really thought about the irony of asking about surround sound from a "stereo" Smile

I tried what you recommended, and experienced the same issue. No voice track through the speakers. I decided to wait for a chance to update xbmc. I have switched to the the snapshot AUR package, which calls itself "Beta 2". The problem has vanished!

I'm getting all audio channels, as normal through my AV Received.
I guess it was a bug that had already been resolved.

Thanks for taking the time to try to help!
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#4
I hate to guess ... but I guess anyways. You are most likely running a fullblown pulseaudio server and xbmc gotham final will pick that up, cause _you_ have it installed. Make sure to read the release announcement, I am tired of linking: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=PulseAudio all the time.
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
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#5
Actually, i didn't even have pulseaudio installed.

Arch installs to a command prompt, x isn't even installed by default. I had xbmc running in standalone mode.

It was actually after i installed pulseaudio, and updated xbmc that it started working correctly.
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#6
Debug Log
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
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#7
A message from the Arch packager:

Quote:- According to an xbmc dev using external/system ffmpeg with xbmc is "pure stupid" Big Grin

Why does she not develop her own media center Smile

@fritsch, if you want to waste your time, go ahead
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#8
Quote:Arch installs to a command prompt, x isn't even installed by default. I had xbmc running in standalone mode.

And my car drives without gasoline ...
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
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#9
Uninstalling pulseaudio fixed it for me. I don't think I manually installed it, running XBMC-Live that's been upgraded a few times.
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#10
(2014-03-08, 04:10)mcfang Wrote: Uninstalling pulseaudio fixed it for me. I don't think I manually installed it, running XBMC-Live that's been upgraded a few times.

Same here. It's amazing how often that fixes things.
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