[Antonin Kyrene]

Hello!

I am posting here because I am OS independent.  I can choose Windows, Mac, Linux or Pi for this project.  I would prefer Linux; however, most of my Mac use is with VLC, so I can adapt.

I have been doing a lot of research on Kodi.  It appears to be the answer to my desire to make a complete break from iTunes.  Where I currently have a large Synology NAS, I will need to downsize significantly, as I am retiring and will be disconnecting from civilization for long periods of time.  Power, portability and simplicity will be my new norm; therefore, I need to compress heavily to accomplish my mission.  DRM-protected content is not an issue, as all of my precious media is physical and tangible.

My best solution is to utilize HEVC with HE-AAC 5.1 for video, and HE-AAC 80 for audio.  All three are acceptable to me - my vision and hearing have long since degraded from exceptional to somewhat acceptable.  Research suggests the only solution available would be Dolby Digital transcoding "on the fly" from the HE-AAC 5.1 source, and it appears Kodi supports this, but I would like to clarify this.  I would be using HDMI for both video and audio.

Do I understand correctly that Kodi can convert HE-AAC 5.1 to Dolby Digital "on the fly" and output them to the AVR HDMI input?

Thank you for your consideration.

[Jogee]

If you are connecting to an audio/video receiver, why not just let Kodi send the decoded audio (LPCM) over HDMI to the AVR?  Just about every AVR I've seen will handle 8 channels uncompressed.

[Antonin Kyrene]

If HE-AAC 5.1 > LPCM > AVR works, that is even better.  No sense in transcoding from one lossy format to another.  I never even thought of that.  I am glad I took the time to register and ask.

I now have a NUC10 I can experiment with.  This is a good day indeed.

Thank you!

[jbinkley60]

Hello!

I am posting here because I am OS independent.  I can choose Windows, Mac, Linux or Pi for this project.  I would prefer Linux; however, most of my Mac use is with VLC, so I can adapt.

I have been doing a lot of research on Kodi.  It appears to be the answer to my desire to make a complete break from iTunes.  Where I currently have a large Synology NAS, I will need to downsize significantly, as I am retiring and will be disconnecting from civilization for long periods of time.  Power, portability and simplicity will be my new norm; therefore, I need to compress heavily to accomplish my mission.  DRM-protected content is not an issue, as all of my precious media is physical and tangible.

My best solution is to utilize HEVC with HE-AAC 5.1 for video, and HE-AAC 80 for audio.  All three are acceptable to me - my vision and hearing have long since degraded from exceptional to somewhat acceptable.  Research suggests the only solution available would be Dolby Digital transcoding "on the fly" from the HE-AAC 5.1 source, and it appears Kodi supports this, but I would like to clarify this.  I would be using HDMI for both video and audio.

Do I understand correctly that Kodi can convert HE-AAC 5.1 to Dolby Digital "on the fly" and output them to the AVR HDMI input?

Thank you for your consideration.

Another option to consider is leveraging Mezzmo with Kodi.  With this solution Mezzmo can totally import an iTunes library and host any other audio / video content you would like.  It can also transcode, if needed, on the fly to any audio format your Kodi player or any other client will support.  Mezzmo has a fantastic music import facility for grabbing metadata and such, as well as an extensive and flexible database capability to totally customize how your library is organized.  Kodi as the music player with Mezzmo is a great solution.  I have a medium sized audio library hosted this way (~10,000 audio tracks) and do things like streaming whole house audio, Internet radio streaming, stream to my phone and many other end points, including numerous Kodi clients running the Mezzmo Kodi addon.  You can easily run Mezzmo and Kodi together on a single Windows system to meet your needs.  Here's a Wiki page with a bit more information though it's a bit more focused on video streaming, the audio capabilities are all similar. 

Happy to answer any questions.

Jeff