.dsf support in kodi

hi, is it possible to somehow play .dsf files? i have some songs in .dsf but seems like kodi is not able to play them. it only shows the size and when i press on play it looks like as if it would do something (showing the playback icon in the upper right) but no sound :confused:

What about installing Kodi DSF audio decoder addon?

which one?
i do NOT mean some wierd sony sega format, i mean DSD/DSF

Confirm.
No sound playing .dsf audio files running stable CE 9.2.5 on N2

Crosscheck:
Playback is working on my S905X box running CE 9.2.5 non-ng version

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thanks for confirming :wink:
do you mean it should be possible in general to play sacd in kodi without any special addon or so?

Yes, I can confirm it.
SACD playback works on my old S905X using old kernel.

DonĀ“t know why not running on my N2 using the new kernel

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Can it be related to the issue in these discussions?

ItĀ“s no stutter, SACD playback is broken in ng build

Hi Tim,
Do you mean DSF/DSD file format is playable or actual SACD? Iā€™m puzzled by reference to SACD which is a physical disk medium. To explain - I have quite a number of SACDs which, some years ago, I ripped using an old Sony Playstation and special firmware to extract and decrypt the tracks into .iso which I subsequently converted into high bitrate PCM FLAC. I extracted a few of the tracks into DSD/DSF and played them directly on my Sony AVR, but never knew that Kodi would possibly play the iso or extracted DSD directly. Can you point to any threads on here or on Kodi forum where I could research further, please? With the AVR I have (and the state of my hearing!) I donā€™t think I would be able to resolve an audio quality difference between the native DSD and the converted PCM, but it would be useful exercise to try.

Yes, file format
Audio
Format : DSD
Format/Info : Direct Stream Digital
Commercial name : DSD64
Format settings : Little
Duration : 3 min 32 s
Bit rate : 5 645 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 2 822 kHz
Compression mode : Lossless
Stream size : 143 MiB (100%)

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Tim,
I did a bit of digging in the Kodi forum and found a thread on SACD which I had contributed to back in 2012! Having read through all 350+ posts I can see that SACD ISO playback is possible with varying success depending on whether 2.0 or 5.1 but the ā€œholy grailā€ of native DSD passthrough is still not realised. It appears that DSD stream is converted to PCM on the fly, so no benefit to me as I used Foobar to convert each album to its highest appropriate PCM rate (88.2kHz or 176.4kHz) when I was processing the ISOs in the first place. I may try out the ISO playback addon just to see what success I have with my archived material. Perhaps the driver for native DSD playback over HDMI will be developed in time :wink:

Tim,
I can confirm that my S905X (on old kernel) is reading SACD ISOs just fine and playing back DSF files (converting to 192kHz PCM).
No luck with my N2+. Have you ever had DSF and SACD ISO working on your N2? Otherwise, itā€™s some sort of build issue, perhaps?

I havenā€™t tried it yet on my N2, because I own only a few .dsf files.
Most of my music files are .flac

Tim,
Your previous post indicated that it was not working on your N2, so I assumed you had tried it. Your S905X on the new kernel is not working, but on the old kernel is ok. I donā€™t have the new kernel installed on my S905X, only the old one, but that is ok for me. Just my N2 on the new kernel is problematic.

Iā€™m getting to the core of the issue, I think. Kodi is configured on my system for ā€œBest Matchā€ in the audio settings and HDMI Multichannel. This handles all my own ripped audio which maxes out at 192kHz 5.1 PCM for my DVD-A files or any lower sampling rate (176.4/88.2kHz 5.1 or 2.0) for my SACD rips. It also handles bitstreamed audio like DD or various flavours of DTS which my Sony AVR supports.

However, when I play DSF rips or SACD ISO files, then the N2+ tries to convert to the maximum PCM rate it thinks my Sony DN-1080 can handle - 352.8Hz. Any of the specs I can find for my receiver indicate that the maximum PCM rate over HDMI for the receiver is 192kHz although it will handle a native DSD stream also.

The workaround for this is to set a fixed rate in Kodi to 192kHz and Kodi then outputs at this sampling rate and the audio is ok for 2.0 SACD sources. Altenatively you can select the non-multi channel HDMI setting in Kodi and this will work as its upper limit is 192kHz, but you canā€™t then handle 5.1 source audio, only 2.0.
The device setup in the Kodi log provides this set of capabilities for the HDMI multichannel device:

  Device 3

2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072 NOTICE: m_deviceName : surround71:CARD=AMLAUGESOUND,DEV=0
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072 NOTICE: m_displayName : AML-AUGESOUND
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072 NOTICE: m_displayNameExtra: HDMI Multi Ch PCM
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072 NOTICE: m_deviceType : AE_DEVTYPE_PCM
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072 NOTICE: m_channels : FL, FR, BL, BR, FC, LFE, SL, SR
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072 NOTICE: m_sampleRates : 8000,11025,16000,22050,32000,44100,48000,64000,88200,96000,176400,192000,384000
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072 NOTICE: m_dataFormats : AE_FMT_S24NE4,AE_FMT_S32NE,AE_FMT_S16NE,AE_FMT_S16LE
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072 NOTICE: m_streamTypes : No passthrough capabilities

So Kodi thinks my AVR is capable of accepting the 384kHz bit rate and will use anything up to that, but my device wonā€™t accept it.

This is similar to the other thread regarding low-bitrate radio stations (22.05kHz) which the N2 is outputting but my AVR is incapable of resolving as the lower limit is 32kHz.

It would seem that the S905X builds on the old kernel are using 32kHz at the lower end and 192kHz at the upper end to make the output compatible with most receivers, whereas the build for the N2 which is on the new kernel allows for unsupported bit rates at the lower and upper limits.

Maybe some of the devs could comment on this? Iā€™m not sure whether this is a CoreElec build parameter that can be tweaked or itā€™s a Kodi issue.

Joe

The question was about .dsf playback.
I tested .dsf playback aka SACD on my N2 ā†’ not working
I tested .dsf playback on my S905X using old kernel ā†’ working

But i canĀ“t test SACD .iso ā†’ I donĀ“t own any SACD .iso

KODI version is the same usin old or ng-kernel, expect itĀ“s no KODI issue

Try adjusting the audio settings on your N2 to fixed (say at 88.2kHz or 176.4kHz) and see if you get playback. Iā€™m pretty convinced that the builds on the new kernel are exceeding the capabilities of our AVRs.

Interesting, youā€™re not wrong. Hereā€™s the output of a GXL device, the audio driver is different on GX* devices.

2015-01-01 02:00:15.178 T:4070073216  NOTICE:     Device 3
2015-01-01 02:00:15.179 T:4070073216  NOTICE:         m_deviceName      : hdmi:CARD=AMLM8AUDIO,DEV=0
2015-01-01 02:00:15.179 T:4070073216  NOTICE:         m_displayName     : AML-M8AUDIO
2015-01-01 02:00:15.179 T:4070073216  NOTICE:         m_displayNameExtra: HDMI
2015-01-01 02:00:15.179 T:4070073216  NOTICE:         m_deviceType      : AE_DEVTYPE_HDMI
2015-01-01 02:00:15.179 T:4070073216  NOTICE:         m_channels        : FL, FR, BL, BR, FC, LFE, SL, SR
2015-01-01 02:00:15.179 T:4070073216  NOTICE:         m_sampleRates     : 32000,44100,48000,88200,96000,176400,192000
2015-01-01 02:00:15.179 T:4070073216  NOTICE:         m_dataFormats     : AE_FMT_S16NE,AE_FMT_S16LE,AE_FMT_RAW

The passthrough device on the N2+ looks like this:

   2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072  NOTICE:     Device 5
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072  NOTICE:         m_deviceName      : hdmi:CARD=AMLAUGESOUND,DEV=0
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072  NOTICE:         m_displayName     : AML-AUGESOUND
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072  NOTICE:         m_displayNameExtra: HDMI
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072  NOTICE:         m_deviceType      : AE_DEVTYPE_HDMI
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072  NOTICE:         m_channels        : FL, FR, BL, BR, FC, LFE, SL, SR
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072  NOTICE:         m_sampleRates     : 8000,11025,16000,22050,32000,44100,48000,64000,88200,96000,176400,192000
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072  NOTICE:         m_dataFormats     : AE_FMT_S16NE,AE_FMT_S16LE,AE_FMT_RAW
2020-11-20 12:54:27.667 T:4042675072  NOTICE:         m_streamTypes     : STREAM_TYPE_AC3,STREAM_TYPE_DTSHD,STREAM_TYPE_DTSHD_MA,STREAM_TYPE_DTSHD_CORE,STREAM_TYPE_DTS_1024,STREAM_TYPE_DTS_2048,STREAM_TYPE_DTS_512,STREAM_TYPE_EAC3,STREAM_TYPE_TRUEHD

Upper limit of 192kHz (ok for my AVR)
Lower limit of 8kHz (not ok for my AVR)

Passthrough device on my S905X (3.14 kernel) looks like:

2020-11-20 17:07:35.641 T:4066382720  NOTICE:     Device 3
2020-11-20 17:07:35.641 T:4066382720  NOTICE:         m_deviceName      : hdmi:CARD=AMLM8AUDIO,DEV=0
2020-11-20 17:07:35.641 T:4066382720  NOTICE:         m_displayName     : AML-M8AUDIO
2020-11-20 17:07:35.641 T:4066382720  NOTICE:         m_displayNameExtra: HDMI
2020-11-20 17:07:35.641 T:4066382720  NOTICE:         m_deviceType      : AE_DEVTYPE_HDMI
2020-11-20 17:07:35.641 T:4066382720  NOTICE:         m_channels        : FL, FR, BL, BR, FC, LFE, SL, SR
2020-11-20 17:07:35.642 T:4066382720  NOTICE:         m_sampleRates     : 32000,44100,48000,88200,96000,176400,192000
2020-11-20 17:07:35.642 T:4066382720  NOTICE:         m_dataFormats     : AE_FMT_S16NE,AE_FMT_S16LE,AE_FMT_RAW
2020-11-20 17:07:35.642 T:4066382720  NOTICE:         m_streamTypes     : STREAM_TYPE_AC3,STREAM_TYPE_DTSHD,STREAM_TYPE_DTSHD_MA,STREAM_TYPE_DTSHD_CORE,STREAM_TYPE_DTS_1024,STREAM_TYPE_DTS_2048,STREAM_TYPE_DTS_512,STREAM_TYPE_EAC3,STREAM_TYPE_TRUEHD

Upper limit 192kHz, lower limit 32kHz, which is basically what my AVR supports.

Ok, so basically the older devices support sample rates within the range of what your AVRs support.
The new devices have a much wider range of supported sample rates, not sure what we can do to fix this.

Does it work right if you connect the box directly to the TV?