AAC 5.1/7.1 and DTS-HD/DTS-MA/DTS-X playback issue

M

mulderfox

Member
Hi,

I know this has been discussed before, but I would love to know if there is any solution/workaround/configuration that is actually working.
I am using the latest Kodi and latest firmware (006), but any DTS format above standard DTS is sent to my AVR (Marantz SR6015) as DTS only (I checked with another box and it is able to send it correctly and the sound track is recognized as DTS-X)
As for AAC 5.1/7.1 - it's worse as it downmixes it to PCM Stereo - and again, another box was able to send it as multichannel PCM (5.1 or 7.1 as the case may be) to my AVR.
Minix has been promising a solution? that's been over a year..
Please let me know if there is something to be done.

Thanks.
 
mulderfox said:
Minix has been promising a solution? that's been over a year..
Click to expand...
Not exactly promising but they have failed to develop a solution to date which is extremely poor of them

Coreelec is your best option for Kodi

If you try slimbox, HD audio does passthrough but from memory multichannel AAC does not.
However, if you have a HDR/DV capable TV then you will have tremendous difficulty in stopping your TV going into a HDR/DV mode by default. In fact I only acheived this with their V11.5 with great difficulty , and wasnt able to stop it at all with V11.6.
 
pusb87 said:
Not exactly promising but they have failed to develop a solution to date which is extremely poor of them

Coreelec is your best option for Kodi

If you try slimbox, HD audio does passthrough but from memory multichannel AAC does not.
However, if you have a HDR/DV capable TV then you will have tremendous difficulty in stopping your TV going into a HDR/DV mode by default. In fact I only acheived this with their V11.5 with great difficulty , and wasnt able to stop it at all with V11.6.
Click to expand...

Okay, so I have tried both solutions and neither of them is working well:

1. CoreElec - supposedly best of all worlds, runs from a MicroSD card or flash drive - leaves the existing firmware mostly intact (installs some files to a separate partition on the eMMC storage), and does play all the audio formats perfectly - including multichannel AAC (5.1/7.1) and DTS X as well as DTS-HD. But... and there is a big "but": it is almost unusable. For some reason, it freezes quite a bit (and it is none to do with the storage medium I use. I tried high quality flash drive from Sandisk, as well as crappy flash drives as well as another quality microSD card. All the same (some worse than others): addons install perfectly at the start, then start failing install. Configuration (and the most annoying is the video calibration) resets after each reboot. And worse of all, it freezes. It freezes when you try to access folders, or stops scanning and then when you try to access the network shares, it will freeze again. I have tried 3 versions of CoreElec (stable, nightly, and legacy) and it is all the same. It's either a bug they don't care about, or something about the compatibility to this Minix model. I don't know. But it simply does not work well enough to be a solution.

2. SlimBox - beautiful ROM, which took me a while to get back to USB burning tool and manage to get it connected properly. At first I thought I have found the best of all worlds (again): full android system (not limited just to Kodi), fast ROM, plus all the audio formats support I needed. On paper that is. DTS X does not work (at most it will send DTS-HD but then the sound breaks). Multichannel AAC? no such luck. It still sends only stereo to my AVR.
I have tried setting the audio device to both Packed and RAW. Similar results (only without RAW you have less passthrough options).

Is there anything I am missing? Slimbox is a russian ROM so there were a few questions in russian I have no idea about at the start. But still..

I hope someone can help. I'm going crazy here. (and I have wrote both to Minix and CoreElec for help)

Thanks again.
 
mulderfox said:
1. CoreElec - supposedly best of all worlds, runs from a MicroSD card or flash drive - leaves the existing firmware mostly intact (installs some files to a separate partition on the eMMC storage), and does play all the audio formats perfectly - including multichannel AAC (5.1/7.1) and DTS X as well as DTS-HD. But... and there is a big "but": it is almost unusable. For some reason, it freezes quite a bit (and it is none to do with the storage medium I use. I tried high quality flash drive from Sandisk, as well as crappy flash drives as well as another quality microSD card. All the same (some worse than others): addons install perfectly at the start, then start failing install. Configuration (and the most annoying is the video calibration) resets after each reboot. And worse of all, it freezes. It freezes when you try to access folders, or stops scanning and then when you try to access the network shares, it will freeze again. I have tried 3 versions of CoreElec (stable, nightly, and legacy) and it is all the same. It's either a bug they don't care about, or something about the compatibility to this Minix model. I don't know. But it simply does not work well enough to be a solution.
Click to expand...
Coreelec works perfectly for me (and others !) from a microsd card and has no issues connecting to network shares ( in my case a NAS). I am using Coreelec 19.2 rc2. Its fast , no freezing and is perfectly compatible with the U22.
However, myself and others have reported issues that you seem to have when installing from some USB flash drives.

I can only suggest trying from another SD card, and it is important that you get the right display settings set up ( HDR/DV etc) in android mode prior to installing Coreelec.

mulderfox said:
SlimBox - beautiful ROM, . DTS X does not work (at most it will send DTS-HD but then the sound breaks).
Click to expand...
DTS-X worked for me on the 11.5 Android Pie version. Multi channel AAC didnt work .

Yes its potentially a nice ROM, and shows that HD audio passthrough is possible in android, but Corelec is my goto at the moment for the U22 while we wait for Minix to pull their socks up
 
pusb87 said:
Coreelec works perfectly for me (and others !) from a microsd card and has no issues connecting to network shares ( in my case a NAS). I am using Coreelec 19.2 rc2. Its fast , no freezing and is perfectly compatible with the U22.
However, myself and others have reported issues that you seem to have when installing from some USB flash drives.

I can only suggest trying from another SD card, and it is important that you get the right display settings set up ( HDR/DV etc) in android mode prior to installing Coreelec.

DTS-X worked for me on the 11.5 Android Pie version. Multi channel AAC didnt work .

Yes its potentially a nice ROM, and shows that HD audio passthrough is possible in android, but Corelec is my goto at the moment for the U22 while we wait for Minix to pull their socks up
Click to expand...
Thanks for the feedback. However, the settings being reset in coreelec every reboot, as well as the freezes I mentioned and issues with add-ons installations makes it an unstable solution. Which micro SD card are you using?
 
pusb87 said:
Coreelec works perfectly for me (and others !) from a microsd card and has no issues connecting to network shares ( in my case a NAS). I am using Coreelec 19.2 rc2. Its fast , no freezing and is perfectly compatible with the U22.
However, myself and others have reported issues that you seem to have when installing from some USB flash drives.

I can only suggest trying from another SD card, and it is important that you get the right display settings set up ( HDR/DV etc) in android mode prior to installing Coreelec.

DTS-X worked for me on the 11.5 Android Pie version. Multi channel AAC didnt work .

Yes its potentially a nice ROM, and shows that HD audio passthrough is possible in android, but Corelec is my goto at the moment for the U22 while we wait for Minix to pull their socks up
Click to expand...

Hi, quick update:
I am currently on the slimbox firmware, and took your advice and used (yet) another microSD card to install (latest stable) coreelec. This time, I did not inject the blob thingie (and since the firmware is newly flashed it wasn't present as it was in the previous official firmware). I don't know if that's the issue, but mostly Coreelec works well now. Only a few pet peeves: Got to do video calibration for each and every variation of resolution and standard (SDR/HDR), and default video format is 1080p HDR. Why?
Also, I did experience another freeze when I tried opening an IPTV channel while the library was scanning. I am not sure if it's because CoreElec is not great at multi-tasking (which it should be - more so than heavier android), or something else. My two cents: if this happens, don't just pull the power cord out and put it back in. Eject the microSD card after you are sure the box is frozen, and only then pull the power cord out, put the microSD card back in and then plug the power cord back. Otherwise, chances are your Coreelec installation will be corrupted. Happened to me a few times.
Still would be happy for any more advice.

Thanks
 
Im using one of these, its what i had lying around >>
1626274374250.png

Re injection Blob, when i first used Corelec i did install the Blob, but for whatever reason I cant really remember now i decided it was a bad move !

mulderfox said:
Got to do video calibration for each and every variation of resolution and standard (SDR/HDR), and default video format is 1080p HDR. Why
Click to expand...
I dont have any issues with video calibration.

Regarding SDR/HDR/DV, like i mentioned previously it is important that you get the right display settings set up ( HDR/DV etc) in android mode prior to installing Coreelec.

Getting this right and to stick is a bit of a nightmare, especially with slimbox, so I would strongly suggest you factory reset and install Minix Rom 006A.

mulderfox said:
Also, I did experience another freeze when I tried opening an IPTV channel while the library was scanning
Click to expand...

I dont use IPTV in Kodi at all , did try it once in android but far to slow for me. Its much better just to use an IPTV app in Android IMHO.
mulderfox said:
don't just pull the power cord out and put it back in. Eject the microSD card after you are sure the box is frozen, and only then pull the power cord out, put the microSD card back in and then plug the power cord back. Otherwise, chances are your Coreelec installation will be corrupted. Happened to me a few times.
Click to expand...
Never experienced that !

Good luck, its worth persisting !!
 
pusb87 said:
Im using one of these, its what i had lying around >>
View attachment 3537

Re injection Blob, when i first used Corelec i did install the Blob, but for whatever reason I cant really remember now i decided it was a bad move !


I dont have any issues with video calibration.

Regarding SDR/HDR/DV, like i mentioned previously it is important that you get the right display settings set up ( HDR/DV etc) in android mode prior to installing Coreelec.

Getting this right and to stick is a bit of a nightmare, especially with slimbox, so I would strongly suggest you factory reset and install Minix Rom 006A.



I dont use IPTV in Kodi at all , did try it once in android but far to slow for me. Its much better just to use an IPTV app in Android IMHO.

Never experienced that !

Good luck, its worth persisting !!
Click to expand...

I've been using Coreelec so far. I am able to watch some IPTV live channels, but only via video add-ons. Using macs via stalker IPTV add-on fails.
HD Audio (and basically all audio formats) works quite flawlessly with coreelec. I did notice that 8k video which works in android kodi does not work at all under Coreelec.
I haven't tried DV format files, but I doubt they'll work as my TV does not support Dolby Vision.
I have re-flashed (which was a challenge for some reason) to rooted 006a firmware. Since then my video modes change correctly and the default is no longer HDR (after setting it correctly in settings).
I am looking forward to Minix figuring out how to get HD Audio to work with their firmware. I have been told by a contact in Minix that they are working on a workaround/solution as Amlogic SDK is the issue that causes this in Android.
 
mulderfox said:
I've been using Coreelec so far. I am able to watch some IPTV live channels, but only via video add-ons. Using macs via stalker IPTV add-on fails.
HD Audio (and basically all audio formats) works quite flawlessly with coreelec. I did notice that 8k video which works in android kodi does not work at all under Coreelec.
I haven't tried DV format files, but I doubt they'll work as my TV does not support Dolby Vision.
I have re-flashed (which was a challenge for some reason) to rooted 006a firmware. Since then my video modes change correctly and the default is no longer HDR (after setting it correctly in settings).
I am looking forward to Minix figuring out how to get HD Audio to work with their firmware. I have been told by a contact in Minix that they are working on a workaround/solution as Amlogic SDK is the issue that causes this in Android.
Click to expand...

did they tell you why it has taken so long to get the hd sound to work? this box has been out for almost a year and a half now and hd sound is something i would have expected on day one. i cant remember but did they advertised that this box was able to play hd sound? if so people could get a refund for being miss sold, im getting sick of buying things that do not work, iv not liked this box since the day i got it, my av receiver has the hdmi 2.1 bug issue (denon) and my samsung qled does not have earc even though samsung have been claiming its coming for over a year :(
 
Well, as I mentioned it seems to be due to amlogic sdk for Android. It affects most if not all s922 based TV boxes, so it's not just minix that experiences this, and other manufacturers have the exact same issue.
As I understand, they're working on a workaround for this. Not a simple fix, as there isn't one.
That's all I know.

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk
 
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