Little Disapointed running coreelec

Yes, posted at CE also some time ago, but I suspect there’s not a lot they can do since there’s no source for these drivers, right?

Basically the situation is:

  • Old kernel: LPCM works without artifacts (except for high bit-depth/frequency, which does not work at all), but high bitrate bitstreaming does not work.
  • New kernel: Bitstreaming now works as expected, but LPCM even at normal rates that used to work fine (e.g. 44.1khz/48khz) produces frequent popping noises.

EDIT: I’m not certain if the issue of getting stuck in bitstream mode is still evident at this stage because I cannot use LPCM for any extended period of time, and have to force everything to be encoded as AC3 and upmixing stereo to multi-channel, which sounds terrible especially for music, but it’s the only way I can avoid sending all those pops to my speakers.

1 Like

@numbqq after running a few more tests on 5.15.119, it looks like after playing either DTSHD-MA or TrueHD Atmos audio once successfully, any subsequent attempts to play these high bitrate codecs causes the audio interface to send garbage that my receiver can’t interpret.

I also note that TrueHD and DTSHD-MA bitstreaming are for some reason only advertised on the surround71 multi-channel PCM audio device, instead of on the HDMI device, where all other bitstream formats are advertised. On a typical audio interface, the mutli-channel device would only be used for multi-channel LPCM, and bitstreaming would only be advertised on the dedicated HDMI device. This might explain some of the weirdness when trying to use LPCM, like appearing to get stuck in bitstream mode.

There appears to be no difference between successful playback and unsuccessful playback, as reported in dmesg, or from the Kodi side - everything seems like it should be working, but the audio interface just doesn’t send correct data.

kodi.log
dmesg-success.txt
dmesg-failure.txt

Hello @pdffs

CE team will check this issue next week.

1 Like

Just for information, I also notice the presence of these crackles, on certain audio formats. And it is very annoying indeed.

I don’t know exactly why, but on my end, these crackles appear on all my stereo sources. For months now.

Hello @David_T @pdffs

Could check this latest build image?

https://relkai.coreelec.org/Amlogic-no/ce-22/CoreELEC-Amlogic-no.aarch64-22.0-Piers_nightly_20241106-Khadas_VIM4.img.gz

And provide the logs (kodi.log and dmesg) if it still has issue.

2 Likes

@numbqq some improvements here! Looks like I’m now able to play content with TrueHD/DTS-MA audio tracks more than once per boot on this image, however LPCM audio still exhibits consistent pops/clicks. Logs below are from a clean boot, then just playing some stereo audio as LPCM, not sure if it shows much useful info though.

dmesg
kodi.log

Appreciate the assistance, really hoping this last audio issue can finally be put to bed for this hardware.

1 Like

Hello @pdffs

You need to use Multi-PCM.

And you need to setup correct channel numbers:

  • for HDMI: 2.0
  • for Multi-PCM: match sound system

https://kodi.wiki/view/Settings/System/Audio#Audio_Decoder

@numbqq the logs show it was already using Multi Ch PCM as the output device:

    2024-11-06 19:40:54.759 T:1203     info <general>:     Device 3     
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.759 T:1203     info <general>:         m_deviceName      : surround71:CARD=AMLAUGESOUND,DEV=0     
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.759 T:1203     info <general>:         m_displayName     : AML-AUGESOUND     
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.759 T:1203     info <general>:         m_displayNameExtra: HDMI Multi Ch PCM     
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.759 T:1203     info <general>:         m_deviceType      : AE_DEVTYPE_HDMI     
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.759 T:1203     info <general>:         m_channels        : FL, FR, BL, BR, FC, LFE, SL, SR     
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.759 T:1203     info <general>:         m_sampleRates     : 32000,44100,48000,88200,96000,176400,192000     
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.759 T:1203     info <general>:         m_dataFormats     : AE_FMT_S24NE4,AE_FMT_S32NE,AE_FMT_S16NE,AE_FMT_S16LE,AE_FMT_RAW     
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.759 T:1203     info <general>:         m_streamTypes     : STREAM_TYPE_DTSHD_MA,STREAM_TYPE_TRUEHD     
...
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.759 T:1204     info <general>: CActiveAESink::OpenSink - initialize sink
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.759 T:1204    debug <general>: CActiveAESink::OpenSink - trying to open device ALSA:surround71:CARD=AMLAUGESOUND,DEV=0
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.759 T:1204     info <general>: CAESinkALSA::Initialize - Configure simple control for "AUGESOUND"
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.760 T:1204     info <general>: CAESinkALSA - Use card "hw:0" and set codec format "2 CH PCM"
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.760 T:1204     info <general>: CAESinkALSA - Set Spdif to HDMITX to "Spdif_b"
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.760 T:1204     info <general>: CAESinkALSA - Set codec for "Audio spdif_b format"
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.760 T:1204     info <general>: CAESinkALSA - Set codec for "Audio I2S to HDMITX Format"
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.760 T:1204     info <general>: CAESinkALSA - Set codec for "Audio spdif format"
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.761 T:1204     info <general>: CAESinkALSA::Initialize - Attempting to open device "surround71:CARD=AMLAUGESOUND,DEV=0"                                                                                                      
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.763 T:1204     info <general>: CAESinkALSA - Unable to open device "surround71:CARD=AMLAUGESOUND,DEV=0,AES0=0x04,AES1=0x82,AES2=0x00,AES3=0x00" for playback
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.763 T:1204     info <general>: CAESinkALSA::Initialize - Opened device "surround71:CARD=AMLAUGESOUND,DEV=0"
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.764 T:1204     info <general>: CAESinkALSA::InitializeHW - Your hardware does not support AE_FMT_FLOAT, trying other formats
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.764 T:1204     info <general>: CAESinkALSA::InitializeHW - Using data format AE_FMT_S24NE4
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.764 T:1204    debug <general>: CAESinkALSA::InitializeHW - Request: periodSize 2205, bufferSize 8820
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.765 T:1204    debug <general>: CAESinkALSA::InitializeHW - Got: periodSize 2205, bufferSize 8820
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.765 T:1204    debug <general>: CAESinkALSA::InitializeHW - Setting timeout to 200 ms
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.765 T:1204    debug <general>: CAESinkALSA::GetChannelLayout - Input Channel Count: 2 Output Channel Count: 2
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.765 T:1204    debug <general>: CAESinkALSA::GetChannelLayout - Requested Layout: FL, FR
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.765 T:1204    debug <general>: CAESinkALSA::GetChannelLayout - Got Layout: FL, FR (ALSA: FL FR)
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.765 T:1204    debug <general>: CActiveAESink::OpenSink - ALSA Initialized:
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.765 T:1204    debug <general>:   Output Device : AML-AUGESOUND
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.765 T:1204    debug <general>:   Sample Rate   : 44100
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.765 T:1204    debug <general>:   Sample Format : AE_FMT_S24NE4
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.765 T:1204    debug <general>:   Channel Count : 2
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.765 T:1204    debug <general>:   Channel Layout: FL, FR
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.765 T:1204    debug <general>:   Frames        : 2205
    2024-11-06 19:40:54.765 T:1204    debug <general>:   Frame Size    : 8

It doesn’t matter whether I select the HDMI or Multi Ch PCM device though, or whether the channel count is set to 2.0/5.1/7.1 - all LPCM audio produces these pops/clicks, and as I mentioned earlier - low-res LPCM worked fine on the old hi-res-broken kernel, but produces this behaviour on the current kernel.

Hello @pdffs

Could you please open a topic in CoreELEC forum? It is better to followup there.