[ForgotMyUsername]

Hiya,

after a long time, I decided to update to the latest version. As I have a nice collection of multichannel audio files (mostly in dts format) I tried to play them with the latest version. I haven't tried this in ages, it used to work some 10 years ago, but I forgot about the files until I recently found them in an old backup.

The problem is, I can't get kodi to pass them through to my AVR (still the same one that played these files 10 years ago). It makes no difference wether I play them on Windows or on an Android installation. In both cases all I get is noise. It seems to be handed over to the AVR as stereo which it isn't of course.

DTS and DD 5.1 work fine with movies, but no luck with these files. Hope somebody can tell me what to do. I've read a lot on the forum, but the only thing I found out is that it should work - which it doesn't for me.

debug log (Windows)

Thanks in advance,
Marky

[jjd-uk]

Try playing a file using VideoPlayer as that may tell you if the file is any good

[ForgotMyUsername]

Thanks for your time and the idea, I tried playing the files with videoplayer, but it didn't make any difference.

What did make a difference, however, is switching from DIRECTSOUND to WASAPI. With WASAPI, the files are passed through to the receiver, which recognizes them as dts audio. But, unfortunately, there is a short click or hiss at the beginning of playback for each file. This is of course very annoying and unusable. I tried to play around with the audio settings a bit but without any success. It's a "pffft" sound at the beginning of each track. It sounds as if it plays the header of the file or something the like (which doesn't make much sense, as these are single FLAC files + cue). I then tried to convert one of the files back to WAV - and with WAV the click sound disappears! If there is no other solution I might convert all my multichannel albums back to WAV, but I don't think that this should be the only option. Why is there a click with multichannel FLACs? (I included a new debug log. Playback of both versions - FLAC and WAV).

Debug log

Any help appreciated,
Marky

[black_eagle]

Your windows hardware doesn't support those formats.  From your log -

2024-09-03 23:32:25.919 T:10072 info <general>: CAESinkWASAPI::EnumerateDevicesEx: stream type "STREAM_TYPE_DTSHD" on device "BenQ GW2750H (NVIDIA High Definition Audio)" seems to be not supported.
2024-09-03 23:32:25.920 T:10072 info <general>: CAESinkWASAPI::EnumerateDevicesEx: stream type "STREAM_TYPE_DTSHD_MA" on device "BenQ GW2750H (NVIDIA High Definition Audio)" seems to be not supported.
2024-09-03 23:32:25.921 T:10072 info <general>: CAESinkWASAPI::EnumerateDevicesEx: stream type "STREAM_TYPE_TRUEHD" on device "BenQ GW2750H (NVIDIA High Definition Audio)" seems to be not supported.
2024-09-03 23:32:25.921 T:10072 info <general>: CAESinkWASAPI::EnumerateDevicesEx: stream type "STREAM_TYPE_EAC3" on device "BenQ GW2750H (NVIDIA High Definition Audio)" seems to be not supported.
2024-09-03 23:32:25.922 T:10072 info <general>: CAESinkWASAPI::EnumerateDevicesEx: stream type "STREAM_TYPE_DTS" on device "BenQ GW2750H (NVIDIA High Definition Audio)" seems to be not supported.
2024-09-03 23:32:25.924 T:10072 info <general>: CAESinkWASAPI::EnumerateDevicesEx: stream type "STREAM_TYPE_AC3" on device "BenQ GW2750H (NVIDIA High Definition Audio)" seems to be not supported.
2024-09-03 23:32:25.930 T:10072 info <general>: CAESinkWASAPI::EnumerateDevicesEx: sample rate 192khz on device "BenQ GW2750H (NVIDIA High Definition Audio)" seems to be not supported.

Android is kind of hit and miss unless you either use a shield or the Firestick 4k Max v2 (which is what I use), both of which can do any current format AFAIK, including Atmos.

Your SPDIF output should be able to do DTS as its a compressed 5.1 format over two channels.

In kodi you should select spdif as the passthrough device and enable DTS capable receiver.  See https://kodi.wiki/view/Settings/System/A...assthrough

[jjd-uk]

I just noticed the BenQ GW2750H bit which I assume is the TV, so how are you connected to the AVR? is it a direct HDMI connection to the AVR? or are your using HDMI ARC or eARC from the TV? what AVR is it?

[CrystalP]

I tried a few samples and found no issue with dts-wav files.
Same tracks compressed with flac worked mostly fine with v20.5 and v21.1 - except the initial few seconds lost due to the AVR syncing every time a track starts, which doesn't happen with the wav files. The initial silence in my case may be the noise you hear.
However flac tracks did not work at all with v22 and current master and emitted noise at best, which looks like a regression.
edit: flac tracks work the same with master-v22. Problem encountered was that audio volume was not set to 100%, altering the signal to the AVR. It has to be bit-perfect. 20.5 and 21.1 are the same, passthrough is not used for flac.

[ForgotMyUsername]

Thanks a lot for all your ideas. Here are some of the details you asked about. As I mentioned before, I tried to get it working on two different devices in two different rooms.

Room 1:
This is the Windows-PC. Signal leaves the machine via TOSLINK into a converter to digital coax which then is connected to a Denon AVR-3802 (no HDMI support). My PC doesn't have coax out for digital and the AVR is too far away that's why I have to use the converter. However, it works fine with movies, passthrough works fine for either DTS oder AC3 and except for the beginning of the file it sound good. BTW, the BenQ you see is the monitor which is connected via HDMI, but it's not used for audio as its internal speakers are horrible.

Room 2:
This a waipu.tv 4K Stick connected to a Denon AVR-X4000. For movies I use the [RAW] device which works fine. If I use the [IEC] device I get massive delays for sound in movies (3-12 seconds) which makes it completely useless. As these delays are different for every individual movie and the delay changes after I pause a movie, I've given up on this. Everything works fine with [RAW] - except those DTS files. If it's of any use I can post a log for this device too.

I don't know exactly what to do next. As I understand it, it's a good idea to convert the files to WAV if there are certain problems with FLAC, right?

Thanks!

[mister_eff]

Late reply to this, but I have multichannel DTS files that I converted to multichannel FLAC and have been able to play them on Kodi/nVidia Shield with multichannel. Are you still having issues? I can dig in and share my settings whenever I can get my Shield up and running again (I'm dealing with a move).