PulseAudio
Audio | Linux audio | PulseAudio |
This page goes into detail on using PulseAudio on Linux systems. PulseAudio is used when Kodi is installed in a desktop-environment rather than a dedicated/direct boot setup. PulseAudio allows normal video & audio playback in XBMC while at the same time allowing the user to get audio in their browser or other applications. It also allows Kodi playback of video or audio to be paused in order to run a game, Skype or similar. Kodi is set to only use PulseAudio if you have installed it and running.
History
In the past users have experienced problems with audio not working within Kodi, because they were running a full-blown Ubuntu desktop environment with PulseAudio installed. This happened because PulseAudio blocked the device Kodi required, and audio playback only worked reliably when using the virtual Pulse device.
Our workaround for those users has been to uninstall PulseAudio which completely broke desktop audio.
For XBMC 13 'Gotham' and later (named Kodi since 14 'Helix') we wanted this situation to change, so thanks to the new PulseAudio Sink users now can run a normal Ubuntu desktop.
PulseAudio Output Configuration
PulseAudio will be automatically detected and selected in Kodi when it is running.
PulseAudio can be run in one of two modes these are:
Passthrough Mode Used if you want to passthrough (bitstream) AC3, DTS, and EAC3 to an AVR or other device. In order to allow passthrough to work with PulseAudio then it MUST be set to use a 2.0 channel configuration, despite the 2.0 setting this will still allow 5.1 audio from AC3, DTS, and EAC3.
Note: PulseAudio does not currently allow TrueHD or DTS-MA passthrough, this is a PulseAudio limitation and not a limitation of the Kodi implementation.
Multichannel Mode
Used if you want Multichannel PCM out, in this mode you can configure PulseAudio for up to 7.1 channels. In this mode Kodi must decode all audio formats to PCM for passing onto the PulseAudio, this can have the advantage of improve audio/video sync.
Note: Audio decoded to PCM and sent through PulseAudio the audio will not likely be "bit perfect". Where a video has TrueHD 7.1 audio, this can be decoded by Kodi to PCM 7.1, however DTS-HD 7.1 audio can't be decoded by Kodi, only the embedded DTS Core 5.1 can be decoded to PCM 5.1 audio. Als Pulseaudio will always open the number of channels you have configured. You can stop it doing upmixing (see Known issues), but it will still open all configured channels which makes Dolby Pro Logic II of your AVR not usable.
Setting up pavucontrol
Passthrough Mode
In order to activate Passthrough Codecs, just setup pavucontrol, as in the following:
If you like to do this from the command line, issue:
pactl set-sink-formats 0 "pcm; ac3-iec61937; dts-iec61937; eac3-iec61937"
Where 0 is the sink you want to alter. You can print all sinks, by using:
pactl list sinks
You can leave out the codecs your AVR does not support, always keep pcm.
Multichannel Mode
To configure instead Multi channel mode, do the following settings.
Example setup in Kodi
Setup Guide
PC Speakers 2.0 |
PC Speakers 5.1 |
TV SPDIF 2.0 |
TV SPDIF AC3 (1) |
AVR SPDIF AC3/DTS (2) |
AVR HDMI PCM (3) |
AVR HDMI No HD Audio (4) |
AVR HDMI Decode HD Audio (5) | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
PusleAudio Mode | ||||||||
Multichannel | Multichannel | Multichannel | Passthrough | Passthrough | Multichannel | Passthrough | Multichannel | |
Pavucontrol - Output Devices | ||||||||
Port | Speakers | Speakers | Digital Output (S/PDIF) | Digital Output (S/PDIF) | Digital Output (S/PDIF) | HDMI/Displayport | HDMI/Displayport | HDMI/Displayport |
AC3 | N/A | N/A | Disabled | Enabled | Enabled | Disabled | Enabled | Disabled |
EAC3 | N/A | N/A | Disabled | Disabled | Disabled | Disabled | Enabled | Disabled |
DTS | N/A | N/A | Disabled | Disabled | Enabled | Disabled | Enabled | Disabled |
Pavucontrol - Configuration | ||||||||
Profile | Analog Stereo Output | Analog Surround 5.1 Output | Digital Stereo (IEC958) Output |
Digital Stereo (IEC958) Output |
Digital Stereo (IEC958) Output |
Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI) Output |
Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output |
Digital Surround 7.1 (HDMI) Output |
Kodi Settings | ||||||||
Audio Output Device | Speakers | Speakers | SPDIF | SPDIF | SPDIF | HDMI | HDMI | HDMI |
Number of channels | 2.0 | 5.1 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 5.1 | 2.0 | 7.1 |
Enabled passthrough | Disabled | Disabled | Disabled | Enabled | Enabled | Disabled | Enabled | Disabled |
Passthrough output device | N/A | N/A | N/A | SPDIF | SPDIF | N/A | HDMI | N/A |
Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver | N/A | N/A | N/A | Enabled | Enabled | Disabled | Enabled | Disabled |
Enabled Dolby Digital transcoding | N/A | N/A | N/A | Enabled | Enabled | Disabled | Enabled | Disabled |
DTS capable receiver | N/A | N/A | N/A | Disabled | Enabled | Disabled | Enabled | Disabled |
TrueHD capable receiver | N/A | N/A | N/A | Disabled | Disabled | Disabled | Disabled | Disabled |
DTS-HD capable receiver | N/A | N/A | N/A | Disabled | Disabled | Disabled | Disabled | Dsiabled |
(1) Where TV can decode 5.1 AC3.
(2) Where AVR only has SPDIF which will support 5.1 AC3 & DTS.
(3) Where AVR can do 5.1 PCM.
(4) Where AVR has HDMI inputs but can't decode TrueHD or DTS-HD but does support 5.1 Ac3 or DTS.
(5) Where AVR has full decode capabilities including 7.1 PCM.
Combined Output aka dual audio
If you want to output to all your attached devices in parallel, e.g. HDMI out, analog out and USB sound card, it is enough to do as below:
Step 1: Edit /etc/pulse/default.pa
load-module module-combine-sink sink_name=combined
Step 2: Restart pulseaudio.
killall pulseaudio
Kodi will then pickup the device, it is named combined.
Audiophile Pulse User
Pulseaudio resamples everything that does not match the underlaying sink, so if you are an audiophile user, you perhaps want to hear your 96 / 192 khz and 24 bit recordings as exact as possible. Therefore you need to tell pulseaudio to use a better resampler in general and second change the default sample rate to 96 or 192 khz. Pulseaudio does not resample audio, that is already in the correct samplerate. Furthermore you need to take care, that your sink has a wide enough output format.
To do this configuration systemwide (96 khz in that example), change /etc/pulse/daemon.conf to include (please replace already existing lines and also remove the commenting):
default-sample-format = s32le default-sample-rate = 96000 resample-method = speex-float-5
Some remark: This will actively make passthrough non working, as we need s16le format for adding ac3 / dts / etc. float to the sink.
The last setting will increase the resample quality from pulse and therefore the CPU load quite a lot. Again: Resampling is only done, when the sink output does not match the data you throw onto it. But as most normal mp3s are in 44.1 khz, you need to take great care when upsampling them. The overwriting of the resample-method is for this use case.
FAQ
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Known issues
When your audio is much too fast or crackles a lot or passthrough only produces noise, you might have a broken driver in use. If this is the case, try to add tsched=0 to the udev loading section in /etc/pulse/default.pa to read like:
load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0
When Pulseaudio is configured to be multi-channel output, e.g. 5.1 profile from within pavucontrol, 2.0 streams are automatically upmixed, no matter what setting you have chosen in Kodi. This is default pulseaudio server behaviour. You can workaround that by disabling enable-remixing in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
enable-remixing = no
Beware: This will also forbid PA to remix e.g. FL,FR, LFE, FC, BL, BR into FL, FR, LFE, FC, SL, SR - which means you might loose your rears if your speaker layout is non standard.
Audio devices are disappearing with pulseaudio 8.0 (Ubuntu 16.04) especially while running kodi and while using Adjust Refreshrate to match video. This is an issue with the module-switch-on-port-available module and will be fixed with pulseaudio 9.0, the fix sadly won't probably make it into Ubuntu 16.04. As a workaround please disable that feature by editing /etc/pulse/default.pa and commenting or removing load-module module-switch-on-port-available and reboot the system.
HOW-TO
HOW-TO: Disable PulseAudio and use ALSA (without removing PulseAudio) for Ubuntu
References
Linux - Pulseaudio Sink Discussion and further information. |