DTS Audio Dropouts with Kodi 17 (everything is autoupdated to newest versions)

A

AlterSchwede62

New member
Hello

I am a little bit disappointed about these circumstances, because it is written, that the Minix U9-H with uptodate original Firmware (and of course Kodi) is DD and DTS certified.
So I guessed, that DD and DTS 100% are running without any fault (with my Yamaha RX A 3060), connected via HDMI.
But the first DTS movie I watched in Kodi, after about 8 minutes starts to have audio dropouts all some seconds, sometimes minutes. :oops: :unsure:
The next DTS movie had the same problems. That is very hard.
Settings are original on Minix Audio settings and on Kodi they are set to Passthrough.
Were is the fault, or is that still normal on Android Players... even if certified? :confused:
I am very very diappointed about that! :cry:
 
AlterSchwede62 said:
Hello

I am a little bit disappointed about these circumstances, because it is written, that the Minix U9-H with uptodate original Firmware (and of course Kodi) is DD and DTS certified.
So I guessed, that DD and DTS 100% are running without any fault (with my Yamaha RX A 3060), connected via HDMI.
But the first DTS movie I watched in Kodi, after about 8 minutes starts to have audio dropouts all some seconds, sometimes minutes. :oops::unsure:
The next DTS movie had the same problems. That is very hard.
Settings are original on Minix Audio settings and on Kodi they are set to Passthrough.
Were is the fault, or is that still normal on Android Players... even if certified? :confused:
I am very very diappointed about that! :cry:
Click to expand...

The U9-H fully supports DD & DTS audio :).

Unfortunately audio drop outs can be a very hard Gremlin to pin down in some cases. Some people get very noticeable drop outs as you seem to be experiencing, some may get less frequent drop outs that only last a split second & others rarely get any at all. (Thankfully I'm in the latter category with a Sony AVR, I rarely experience audio drop outs with my U9-H).

There are a hell of a lot of variables involved, from different AVR's or soundbars, TV's, & cabling, to the software side of things.

Otherwise, have you setup/checked your audio settings on the U9-H? Enter the U9-H's settings --> Sound settings --> Set the following...

DRC Mode --> Line
DTS Drcscale --> SOUND0, (0%, alter if DTS very quiet).
Digital Sounds --> Auto detection, (should auto set to HDMI passthrough. If it's set to PCM, try manually setting Auto detect or manually set HDMI).
Sound Devices --> Output devices - HDMI.

Are the movies you're watching locally stored or being streamed? (If local, on what type of storage?) Are you using ethernet or Wi-Fi as well?

Start by checking/testing if it's software related.

In Kodi, have you also set the following? (Enter Kodi's Settings --> Sytem Settings --> Audio.)

Keep audio device alive - 1 or 2 mins, (adjust higher if required)
Send low volume noise - Enable

Or, disable them if already enabled & see if that makes a difference.

Have you tried another media player such as MX Player or VLC? Are you getting the same drop outs with them?

See how things are after checking those & let us know how you get on :).
 
Hello ArcticWolf and thanx.
I will try this and hope, that Kodi will run without Dropouts in DTS.

I am running self ripped very small MKVs in 720p or 1080p with a size of 3 to 8 GB.
They are on my NAS, that transfers data via cable with a speed of 95MByte/s. (Byte not Bits!)
My NAS is on ethernet cable connection and the Minix too.
 
Exactly the same issei for me. As OP. Short audio cutouts intermittent on both dts & dd when passthrough is enabled. Have tried EVERY possible setting in ALL different combination. Even factory reset. And also tested kodi on another rom (atv rom by Kondor). Tried audio via optical also instead of hdmi. Nothing helps. Same issue.

So I just gotta to accept that it's pcm audio for me in kodi. Really disappointed. As I bought the u9-h just for kodi and movies.
 
I have the same issue quite often with a Yamaha and Integra receiver. Happens about three times a week.
This always works for me.
1. Use ES's cleaner (hit clean).
2. Use something to kill all running processes.
3. Reboot.
4. Kill all running processes again.
5. Enter Kodi (Don't jack around playing with other programs and start up a bunch of background processes) This has worked every-time for me other than one bad file which the dropouts were from encoding not playback (checked on another device).
 
Rockets said:
I have the same issue quite often with a Yamaha and Integra receiver. Happens about three times a week.
This always works for me.
1. Use ES's cleaner (hit clean).
2. Use something to kill all running processes.
3. Reboot.
4. Kill all running processes again.
5. Enter Kodi (Don't jack around playing with other programs and start up a bunch of background processes) This has worked every-time for me other than one bad file which the dropouts were from encoding not playback (checked on another device).
Click to expand...


Thanks for the tip :) always appreciated. But that is way to much manual hassle to do everytime I wanna watch a series or movie (and I do that alot). I need and want a "press and play" solution. So I'll stick to multi channel pcm for the mean time. It works flawless. So that's something I'll guess.
 
I think, that I will return the Minix. Why?
Meanwhile because of more than one thing.
I set the Options like ArcticWolf wrote and the DTS movies I watched run without dropouts... BUT:

What else I had from the beginning on is, that if during watching a movie in Kodi, I pressed the OK button to get to the playing options, this works.
But if I hit the OK button after f.e. 10 minutes, this does not work any more.
First nothing happens, and after hitting it many times, I could pause a movie and let it go on playing again.
But other buttons do not work, no back button or something else.
Only the Home and System aera button are working, and only if I pressed one of those two buttons I got out of Kodi and the movie stopped, like I could see, when I entered Kodi again.
I could repead this behaviour with each movie I started to watch, no matter whether DTS or other MKVs... after about 10 minutes the OK Button did not work any more.
First I thought, that this was because of the A3 remote, but it too happened with the original remote.
I even cleared the Cache and Data of Kodi, deleted Kodi complete and installed it clean from the Playstore.
Always the same behaviour.
On the top, after clearing cache and the data of Kodi and reinstalling it, Kodi lost the ethernet connection to my NAS. No Windows Workgroup any more. And no chance to get it back. Great!
For me either Kodi or Minix is not built for using them in a normal way, it has too many bugs that prevent me from using it without becoming stressed more and more. :):confused::oops::rolleyes::cautious::unsure::(:):mad::eek:
During the last years I sometimes tried out Android media players, but after some days I always got the same results.
They are still not professional. I am not used to that.

So I will return to my Dune Solo 4k. This player does not have so many options like the Android players, but it runs absolut reliable.
 
osvanberg said:
Exactly the same issei for me. As OP. Short audio cutouts intermittent on both dts & dd when passthrough is enabled. Have tried EVERY possible setting in ALL different combination. Even factory reset. And also tested kodi on another rom (atv rom by Kondor). Tried audio via optical also instead of hdmi. Nothing helps. Same issue.

So I just gotta to accept that it's pcm audio for me in kodi. Really disappointed. As I bought the u9-h just for kodi and movies.
Click to expand...

Passthrough is really only necessary if the CPU in your box isn't strong enough to decode the audio container (DD/DTS) to PCM (which is all your receiver is doing). At the end of the day, there's no difference in audio quality or what gets sent to your speakers since it's all being decoded to PCM.

No one should be spending any time getting passthrough to work unless they have some other crazy CPU eating process going on in the background and the A53 isn't able to keep up. The GPU is already decoding the video, and it doesn't take much for the CPU to decode even something like TrueHD. Pull up the process info while a movie is playing and I bet you'll see barely any difference in usage.
 
As I know, is PCM Stereo.
Stereo does not have much to do with DTS 5.1 or 7.1 or even DTS:X 5.1.4 or something like that.
Only my classic movies or series (from 1930 to 1970) are in Stereo. There PCM might be o.k. for me.
But not for modern movies.
 
AlterSchwede62 said:
As I know, is PCM Stereo.
Stereo does not have much to do with DTS 5.1 or 7.1 or even DTS:X 5.1.4 or something like that.
Only my classic movies or series (from 1930 to 1970) are in Stereo. There PCM might be o.k. for me.
But not for modern movies.
Click to expand...
before you do anything more i suggest the following:-

in android settings selct the pcm option for your audio output
add the advancedsettings file i posted to your kodi setup
.enable passthrough in kodi for the options available in your avr
number of channels should be set to 2
close kodi cleanly and reboot your minix

download this file >> https://ufile.io/bemyz

which is a 5.1 dts-hd-master-audio-sound-check video file that will play a sound to each individual speaker in a 5.1 set up

and play in kodi
 
AlterSchwede62 said:
On the top, after clearing cache and the data of Kodi and reinstalling it, Kodi lost the ethernet connection to my NAS. No Windows Workgroup any more. And no chance to get it back. Great!
Click to expand...
Well of course it did if you cleared all data :oops:

if you cant see your workgroup then in kodi file manager add the ip address of your NAS as a network location. This will then be available for your video library if that is what your trying to do..
 
AlterSchwede62 said:
I think, that I will return the Minix. Why?
Meanwhile because of more than one thing.
I set the Options like ArcticWolf wrote and the DTS movies I watched run without dropouts... BUT:

What else I had from the beginning on is, that if during watching a movie in Kodi, I pressed the OK button to get to the playing options, this works.
But if I hit the OK button after f.e. 10 minutes, this does not work any more.
First nothing happens, and after hitting it many times, I could pause a movie and let it go on playing again.
But other buttons do not work, no back button or something else.
Only the Home and System aera button are working, and only if I pressed one of those two buttons I got out of Kodi and the movie stopped, like I could see, when I entered Kodi again.
I could repead this behaviour with each movie I started to watch, no matter whether DTS or other MKVs... after about 10 minutes the OK Button did not work any more.
First I thought, that this was because of the A3 remote, but it too happened with the original remote.
I even cleared the Cache and Data of Kodi, deleted Kodi complete and installed it clean from the Playstore.
Always the same behaviour.
On the top, after clearing cache and the data of Kodi and reinstalling it, Kodi lost the ethernet connection to my NAS. No Windows Workgroup any more. And no chance to get it back. Great!
For me either Kodi or Minix is not built for using them in a normal way, it has too many bugs that prevent me from using it without becoming stressed more and more. :):confused::oops::rolleyes::cautious::unsure::(:):mad::eek:
During the last years I sometimes tried out Android media players, but after some days I always got the same results.
They are still not professional. I am not used to that.

So I will return to my Dune Solo 4k. This player does not have so many options like the Android players, but it runs absolut reliable.
Click to expand...

Glad that altering your audio settings helped with the audio dropouts at least :). I would wager in your case that your AVR simply required the settings to keep your audio device alive if it immediately fixed the dropouts without any other tinkering required.

As @pusb87 has said too; don't be defeated so easily!! The problems you're mentioning are hardly catastrophic & there are simple answers to the majority had you simply asked!

Your workgroup not being visible can happen sometimes with Kodi on any platform, not just Android. If you'd asked, I would have first offered the simple advice of selecting your NAS as a DLNA connection instead (if available), BUT, then cancel it without proceeding further. Your workgroup may then have been immediately visible again & the problem solved in seconds. Or, again as @pusb87 has advised, you wiped the connection settings to your NAS when you cleared the data, & uninstalled/reinstalled. Getting it back as a Samba share is incredibly easy. For example, adding your NAS manually would have literally taken you 30 seconds.

Additionally, what make/model is your NAS & which OS is it running? Does it have support for NFS for example? In general, NFS is often better & faster!!

All you needed to do was ask & we would have happily helped you out :). With all due respect, it literally sounds like you threw a tantrum & all the toys came flying out of the cot ;).

If you've sent it back already then so be it, obviously it's too late. However, if you still have it & you'd like to try again then just let us know what you need help with. (A patience tolerance greater than the memory span of a goldfish wouldn't do any harm either lol ;). I dread to think what your blood pressure might be pmsl ;). )

Peace,

Wolfy :).
 
Thank you for these many advices.

But for the Most disappointing thing, Pressing the OK Button and nothing happens, there wasnˋt any solution.
For me this behaviour (doing nothing by Hitting the OK Button) is Not acceptable.

I still have it on my desk, but without having a solution for the OK Button, I will Return it.
 
It is very difficut to interpret your remote issues. however have you checked or done the following
1) The batteries
2) Re pairing the A3 remoe and calibrate sensors >> https://theminixforum.com/index.php?threads/the-manual-of-neo-a3.36/
3) Ckeck for any strange keyboard mapping within your kodi setup
4) It may be a kodi build issue if you are using a build
5) Have you tried the kodi Keymap editor to re assign the functions you want in your Kodi setup >>>> https://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:Keymap_Editor

As you say you have similar instances whether using the A3 remote or the original remote it would lead me to think that the remotes themselves are not really the issue
 
Thank you for your help, but I decided to return it, because for me there are things, that are not working ex work.
Meanwhile I am a little bit older, and I do not have the nerves and patience to test, install, and reset the devices and what ever else there could be.
However, again thankl you for your promt and professional help. :)
 
For everyone who has sound issues, try
WBMC 17.6 - Wonderbox.tv ® Media Centre

I had the same issues with dropouts and same sh*t, but this build works for me. You can download it from the Play Store, give it a try!

I hope I can help!
 
AlterSchwede62 said:
As I know, is PCM Stereo.
Stereo does not have much to do with DTS 5.1 or 7.1 or even DTS:X 5.1.4 or something like that.
Only my classic movies or series (from 1930 to 1970) are in Stereo. There PCM might be o.k. for me.
But not for modern movies.
Click to expand...

No no no. You misunderstand the relationship between PCM and DD/DTS.

DTS/DD are PCM channels that have been compressed to save space. Stereo is 2.0 PCM channels and DD/DTS 5.1/7.1 are 5.1/7.1 PCM channels. Speakers can only receive PCM channels. All passthrough does is make your receiver decode the DD/DTS into PCM. The Minix CPU is good enough that you can skip that step and send PCM directly to your receiver which passes it on to the right speaker. In Kodi audio settings select the number of channels (speakers) you have (2.0/5.1/7.1/etc.) and it will decode it the same way as the receiver. It's easy to test if this is working by using one of the audio samples from the Kodi Wiki: https://kodi.wiki/view/Samples
 
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