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johnham · 2014-10-20, 20:32

I know that Pulseaudio does not support DTS-HD or TrueHD. However, all references to this "non-support" discuss bitperfect passthrough support.

I am trying to output DTS-HD to bluetooth headphones using Pulseaudio. This kind of output will have to be downmixed anyway, so I was wondering if this is supported and if I could get help configuring pulse in this way. This will all need to be done through the command line as I am using OpenELEC.

I have it already compiled, running and working properly with videos which provide stereo audio output. I just need to figure out how to make everything output to stereo which is compatable with bluetooth output.

**fritsch** · 2014-10-20, 21:06

The PA server will take care of everything. Just put it out like you want it.

**fritsch** · 2014-10-20, 21:11

And yeah pulseaudio is currently not supported on OpenELEC at all. An old not maintained package exists, but there is no maintainer - so you won't likely receive any help on that concrete usecase.

johnham · (This post was last modified: 2014-10-20, 21:58 by johnham.)

They have asked me to maintain. *sigh*

The package in the newest nightly is PA 5.0 and it compiles and works GREAT so far. I just need to find a way to output the DTS-HD videos we have to bluetooth headphones. I am not a PA guru by any means, I will post my list-input-sinks momentarily.

Code:
>>> list-sink-inputs    

1 sink input(s) available.

    index: 3

    driver: <protocol-native.c>

    flags: 

    state: RUNNING

    sink: 3 <bluez_sink.00_02_3C_38_92_87>

    volume: front-left: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB,   front-right: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB

            balance 0.00

    muted: no

    current latency: 152.96 ms

    requested latency: 45.32 ms

    sample spec: float32le 2ch 48000Hz

    channel map: front-left,front-right

                 Stereo

    resample method: speex-float-1

    module: 11

    client: 3 <XBMC>

    properties:

        media.name = "xbmc audio stream"

        application.name = "XBMC"

        native-protocol.peer = "UNIX socket client"

        native-protocol.version = "29"

        application.process.id = "908"

        application.process.user = "root"

        application.process.host = "OpenELEC"

        application.process.binary = "xbmc.bin"

        application.language = "C"

        window.x11.display = ":0.0"

        application.process.machine_id = "6e7c154d39e1b2c3b6c9897d0f8e4fa0"

        module-stream-restore.id = "sink-input-by-application-name:XBMC"

johnham · 2014-10-20, 23:50

Fixed it. OpenELEC compiles fine with PA5 support. The biggest issue is it is missing a bluez.conf file. Once compiled and the bluez.conf is added then OpenELEC will allow you to enable the bluetooth service and pair your bluetooth headphones/speakers in the GUI. Then it is really a matter of setting the Kodi settings to Advanced Settings and the audio to a fixed bitrate that matches the output rate of the audio target. On mine I think it was 48000Khz.

**fritsch** · 2014-10-21, 07:49

You don't need to set a fixed output, pulseaudio can cope with every decoded PCM signal out there. So as long as you don't enable "passthrough" xbmc will do the decoding and PA will output whatever it is set for. You can also easily choose: 5.1 speaker setup in xbmc and PA will downmix byself if the output speakers don't match.

**fritsch** · 2014-10-21, 08:03

Btw. you can also make some experiments as you are the maintainer now. See how "live switching" from Analog / hdmi to headphones works, check if the audio continues. This is one of the nicest features of PA - you can just swap the audio device while doing so.

Also test the available passthrough codecs with your digital output devices and your AVR.