I’m trying to get my new N2 up and running. Most everything is going great, but one nagging problem is that 4k streams are causing a challenge.
Video is coming through without an issue - and looks great - but audio is strangely, and consistently, missing vocals. Oddly, background music is coming through crystal clear.
I’m feeding my N2 (coreelec) into my LG TV which feeds into my Onkyo - all hdmi. The TV isn’t 4k - and only supports hdmi 1.4 (is that a problem?). 1080p 5.1 streams work flawlessly, by the way.
Kodi is set up with 5.1 in system settings. I’m not sure what else to play with. Any suggestions?
I spoke a bit too soon. It seems that most 1080p streams have the same issue. 720p, though, consistently work fine.
Try plugging it into the amp hdmi port to rule out any problems with the amp
Arc only supports pcm 2.0. When you feed 5.1 signal into your TV, it only passes through the L And R channels, leaving all other channels including the center channel. So, either connect N2 directly to the receiver or change your channels to 2.0 and enable Dolby digital transcoding. ARC can transmit 5.1 Dolby digital and DTS.
- Make sure you’re looking at Audio settings in Expert mode.
- Set channel count to 2.0.
- Scroll down and enable HDMI Passthrough, make sure that HDMI is selected.
- Enable DTS and Dolby Digital.
Try again and see if that works. I recommend to avoid using DD transcoding if possible.
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Is DD transcoding only needed if you have sources that will result in multichannel LPCM audio?
Setting the channel count to 2.0 seems to have sorted the sound out. I’m now getting stereo sound, which isn’t ideal - so I’ll look to rewire to hit the receiver first.
@jtmarcot As I said, enable HDMI passthrough.
@Boulder Yes, such as multi channel AAC and FLAC.
Yes. But once you set to 2.0 it will transcode only multichannel audio. It will leave stereo as PCM.
@TheCoolest thanks for the suggestions.
I’ve set channel count to 2.0 and have enabled HDMI passthrough. Still through the LG TV to my receiver, I’m getting 2.0 audio. That is, I am getting sound from my center and rears, but not discreet output. Should I be expecting more with this setup?
Apologies, I’m still coming up to speed with the glossary of audio terms.
What format is your audio? You can only pass-through DD and DTS formats, you can’t pass-through formats like AAC and FLAC, those must be either transcoded into DD or passed out as multichannel PCM, which is impossible with your setup. If your TV is not capable of passing through DTS and DD via ARC, I’m not sure what else to recommend.
I’d connect the N2 to the AVR and AVR to TV. Then you can use L-PCM and set the real amount of channel, and get full audio surround with any format.
I’m using the first example, downloaded and playing through whatever the default player is on kodi…https://www2.iis.fraunhofer.de/AAC/multichannel.html
I’ve now plugged directly through my receiver. Same behaviour. I’ve tried 2.0 with passthrough (plays 2.0 only), 5.1 with passthrough (plays 2.0 only) and 5.1 w/o passthrough (plays a garbled mess).
For LPCM directly to AVR you need to select the Multi Ch HDMI audio device in CoreELEC.