XBMC PulseAudio passthrough support (including Nvidia) is available

forall Wrote:@mightymouse2045 - thx for reply.
For test I installed windows 7 and I ran movie with the same connection: hdmi from my box to receiver and from receiver to TV.
In sound settings under windows I saw my onkyo receiver and I choosed it. When I played movie with soundtrack DTS-MA I saw this on my onkyo 608
It's working very well.

Under linux with XBMC I haved sound bun only DTS.


Info about HDMI when XBMC is starting:


dmesg |grep HDMI


The same results I had when I changed in my TV speaker settings: internal to external....

Put Nvidia graphic to box and connecting hdmi from receiver:

dmesg |grep HDMI


and : for f in /proc/asound/card*/eld*; do echo "***** $f *****"; cat $f; done



So question is, why if I connected HDMI to onboard I didn't get the same results?

Ah ok there you go then - your onboard only supports 2 channel over HDMI.

Under windows are you getting DTS-HD MA when you are connected to the onboard, or is that when connected via your NVIDIA card?

Hi cbxbiker61,

Is there any way around the alsa audio device being blocked by XBMC or is that an Alsa limitation?

When XBMC is running I cannot use VLC passthrough, even when XBMC is not playing anything.

I know in the past that one of the reasons for pulse being implemented in Ubuntu and other distributions was because of the limitations of other audio drivers sharing the hardware, but pulse audio is the device that is selected in XBMC (which I know is just passing it through to Alsa), but it isn't playing nicely with other software...

mightymouse2045 Wrote:Ah ok there you go then - your onboard only supports 2 channel over HDMI.

Under windows are you getting DTS-HD MA when you are connected to the onboard, or is that when connected via your NVIDIA card?

It's strange, because under windows I have the same connection like under linux: connected cable to hdmi onboard and now I see in sound settings my onkyo receiver and it support: DTS/DTS-HD,DTS-MA and other
So it's really strange, maybe under windows is problem with some module..

forall Wrote:It's strange, because under windows I have the same connection like under linux: connected cable to hdmi onboard and now I see in sound settings my onkyo receiver and it support: DTS/DTS-HD,DTS-MA and other
So it's really strange, maybe under windows is problem with some module..

hmmm that is strange - ok but if you play a DTS-HD MA file in windows while connected to the onboard does it display correctly on the receiver?

OK - I tracked down the problem:

From the manual for your motherboard RTFM

Quote:Under Grpahics:

Supports Auto Lip Sync, xvYCC and HBR (High Bit Rate
Audio) with HDMI (Compliant HDMI monitor is required)

(see CAUTION 6)


CAUTION!

6. xvYCC is only supported under Windows® 7 64-bit / 7. HBR is supported
under Windows® 7 64-bit / 7 / VistaTM 64-bit / VistaTM.

HBR audio is not supported under linux - this is probably something you could get working but you would need to do some investigation on how to get it working if it's at all possible.

mightymouse2045 Wrote:hmmm that is strange - ok but if you play a DTS-HD MA file in windows while connected to the onboard does it display correctly on the receiver?




OK - I tracked down the problem:

From the manual for your motherboard RTFM


HBR audio is not supported under linux - this is probably something you could get working but you would need to do some investigation on how to get it working if it's at all possible.

Yes, is display corectly on the receiver under windows.

Now I found the same info in manual. To resolve this problem I must buy a nvidia card.

Hi,

I just did a git pull for the pulseaudio and when I run make it appends UNKNOWN.UNKNOWN for the version eg:

libpulsecommon_UNKNOWN.UNKNOWN_la-poll.lo

and tries to install the modules to /lib/modules/pulse-UNKNOWN.UNKNOWN


The previous build etc was fine so not sure if something has changed to break this? Is there any way i can manually set the version to 1.1?

EDIT:

Output from ./configure -V

pulseaudio configure UNKNOWN-dirty
generated by GNU Autoconf 2.68

SOLVED:

Just edited configure and replaced all instances of UNKNOWN-dirty with 1.1 and that fixed it

mightymouse2045 Wrote:Hi,

I just did a git pull for the pulseaudio and when I run make it appends UNKNOWN.UNKNOWN for the version eg:

libpulsecommon_UNKNOWN.UNKNOWN_la-poll.lo

and tries to install the modules to /lib/modules/pulse-UNKNOWN.UNKNOWN


The previous build etc was fine so not sure if something has changed to break this? Is there any way i can manually set the version to 1.1?

EDIT:

Output from ./configure -V

pulseaudio configure UNKNOWN-dirty
generated by GNU Autoconf 2.68

SOLVED:

Just edited configure and replaced all instances of UNKNOWN-dirty with 1.1 and that fixed it

@mightymouse2045 - you are using xbmc under linux and have you dts truehd?

forall Wrote:@mightymouse2045 - you are using xbmc under linux and have you dts truehd?

Grrr I don't know what's going on - I had DTS HD working but no True HD, but then I upgraded Alsa to 1.0.25 because of a reason I can't remember now, and now I can't get DTS HD, I have Dolby and DTS only and I can't downgrade to Alsa 1.0.24 because it brakes Ubuntu.

My movies are in DTS and Dolby only so I can be happy with that I guess

It looks like I am in for a fresh install of Ubuntu which I am sort of dreading, I think I will just wait for Precise to be released and do it then.

mightymouse2045 Wrote:Hi cbxbiker61,

Is there any way around the alsa audio device being blocked by XBMC or is that an Alsa limitation?

When XBMC is running I cannot use VLC passthrough, even when XBMC is not playing anything.

I know in the past that one of the reasons for pulse being implemented in Ubuntu and other distributions was because of the limitations of other audio drivers sharing the hardware, but pulse audio is the device that is selected in XBMC (which I know is just passing it through to Alsa), but it isn't playing nicely with other software...

When a program puts the sound device in pass-through mode it blocks all other access to the device. That's the only way that "raw" data can be passed to the device.

Sorry that I haven't been paying much attention to this thread lately. I will get back to it though. It seems that some others are answering some questions which is good.

I've been working non-stop for weeks now getting my new Xilka distro ported to the CuBox. Since I do native compiles that can take a long time. I'm real close to having my distro for the CuBox online (any day now). The goal is to make the CuBox a top notch Xbmc platform. Solid-run is porting their kernel code into Linux-latest and making fast progress on that.

My intent is to merge my Xbmc efforts on CuBox/x86. I've been waiting on my Cubox/Xilka port before continuing work on Xbmc, since Xilka is particularly good from a development standpoint. It allows you to build debug packages easily when they are useful.