[DeusXM]

Ok, firstly, I have tried searching but had no joy. I am also posting this question in anticipation that I will need to provide more information, so please do advise what else I can provide in terms of info:

I am currently using the XBMCbuntu version of the stable Gotham release. Audio and video are handled over HDMI to a TV with an inbuilt Dolby Digital decoder. I'm using an eMachines ER1401 which has an NVIDIA GeForce 9200.

If I run the Windows edition of Gotham stable and:
Set my speaker configuration to 5.1
Set audio output to HDMI
Set Passthrough to HDMI with DD enabled

XBMC outputs Dolby Digital audio to my TV, which then relays through Optical Out to a 5.1 amplifier system. Unlike a lot of TVs, the optical out definitely does output at 5.1. If I don't use optical out, the TV downmixes the audio to play as stereo through the inbuilt TV speaker (I'm just adding this detail to demonstrate the TV can downmix and than it's definitely receiving DD over HDMI).

If I run the XBMCbuntu edition of Gotham stable with the same settings, what happens is quite different.

Sound is not output as Dolby Digital from the PC to the TV, and just the front right and front left channels are output. What do I need to do to get XBMCbuntu to output 5.1 DD audio over HDMI to the TV to allow the TV to handle decoding and downmixing?

Enabling or disabling passthrough seems to make no difference at all - XBMCbuntu just refuses to output a DD signal over HDMI. The hardware is definitely capable of it as it has worked fine on the Windows edition, but for performance reasons I would rather use XBMCbuntu.

Does anyone have any suggestions? And in terms of helpful logs, what configurations should I use? Thanks in advance.

[FernetMenta]

Remove pulseaudio or configure it correctly:

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=PulseAudio

[DeusXM]

My understanding was that XBMCbuntu Gotham doesn't include PulseAudio and uses alsa instead. Is this not the case?

[uomiarz]

My understanding was that XBMCbuntu Gotham doesn't include PulseAudio and uses alsa instead. Is this not the case?

It is the case. At least it was last time I tried it

post output from:

Code:

aplay -l

and

Code:

aplay -L

[fritsch]

Start with a Debug Log - then we can easily see what's going wrong.

[DeusXM]

Managed to solve by accident myself - if I set output device to HDMI with 2 speakers, and then set a passthrough to also use the HDMI with a DD receiver, Dolby Digital encoded content is output correctly at 5.1.