HOW-TO talk:Remap HDMI audio on Gen 1 ION - Linux

Some XBMCbuntu 12.0 Frodo official release version notes
--HunterZ 14:44, 2 February 2013 (EST)
 * In "Audio output = HDMI" mode, "Passthrough output device" is NOT used for some reason. Instead, only "Audio output device" is used for everything (including menu sounds).
 * Here is an .asoundrc that better accommodates desktop application usage in XBMCbuntu, by setting up an ALSA dmix plugin by default: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=90910&pid=1320755#pid1320755
 * I don't think that Gen 1 ION is able to passthrough AAC over HDMI. XBMC seems to implicitly convert to LPCM when it can, or AC3 as the second choice.

Kodi 14.0 Helix note
It appears that in KodiBuntu 14.0 Helix with default ALSA config, attempting to play 6-channel AAC audio over HDMI no longer results in a 6-channel LPCM passthrough with incorrect mappings. Instead, it appears to end up as 6-channel LPCM non-passthrough with correct mappings. I guess Kodi's AudioEngine is performing the remapping for us, which is probably a good thing.

This means that my Frodo .asoundrc in the article is no longer needed for Kodi itself. However, speaker-test shows that the ALSA-level mappings are still wrong, so remapping is still needed if you plan to use 6+ channel audio in non-Kodi apps. In this case, you can probably just configure Kodi to use hdmi_hw or some other untouched output.

I've updated the article with this info. --HunterZ (talk) 20:11, 1 January 2015 (EST)

Kodi rename note
Just a quick note about the Kodi name change with respect to this article: I think we can leave things as-is, XBMC is only mentioned in the context of particular versions of the software. --HunterZ (talk) 20:14, 1 January 2015 (EST)