Hello,
I recently bought a Raspberry Pi 2B with a Hifiberry digi board.
I connected the rasp to my receiver via S/PDIF. My receiver is a SONY STR-DB925
Although my receiver is an old one it is capable of receiving DTS and AC3 signals.
As long the sound format is analog everything is working fine. Radio/Movie sounds are normal.
As soon as my receiver detects a digital sound it switches to digital decoding.
The display shows it is decoding digital sounds over 5 speakers, but only the background sounds are heard over my front speakers.
I cannot hear any sound over my surround speakers.
E.g. there are no voices over the center speaker.
In OpenElec I've selected the S/PDIF option as output source.
Further I've enabled the passthrough option and I also enabled DTS and AC3 support in OpenElec.
What could be the problem?
Is it because my amp is old (although when connected to my DVD player with S/PDIF it plays perfect DTS signals)
or could this be the same problem as described in: yamaha-dsp-a2?
I hope to find a solution, because the reason to buy a hifiberry was I did not want to replace my receiver.
Date
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24 comments
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HiFiBerry team Hi,
this has nothing to do with the issue in the DSP-A2. This is a pure software issue. If your receiver detects a 5.1. signal, there is not much that can be done. Are you sure you enables passthrough for AC3 and DTS?
Are you using the latest OpenElec version?
Best regards
Daniel -
Striker I use OpenElec 5.0.8
I'm sure i've enabled AC3 and DTS.
If I didn't enable those options, would my receiver still detect digital sound? -
HiFiBerry team As we don't know your receiver, I can't tell what it is displaying when. The HiFiBerry Digi just transports the data it gets from OpenElec without any modification. So it looks like something in your OpenElec installation is wrong. However we can't debug this remotely. You might also check the OpenElec forum. Maybe there are users that had a similar problem before.
Best regards
Daniel -
Striker Ok thank you for your input.
I will give it a try on the OpenElec forum, meanwhile can I perhaps provide you with additional info?
E.g. logs or something else? -
Striker I've still not managed to get 5.1 sound working. I did some research and I found an error in dmesg regarding hifiberry, but I'm not sure if they are significant.
Error is:[ 4.719408] Console: switching to colour dummy device 80x30
[ 5.071334] snd-hifiberry-digi sound: ASoC: CPU DAI (null) not registered
[ 5.071395] snd-hifiberry-digi sound: snd_soc_register_card() failed: -517
[ 5.071425] platform sound: Driver snd-hifiberry-digi requests probe deferral
[ 5.079951] wm8804 1-003b: revision E
[ 5.084252] snd-hifiberry-digi sound: wm8804-spdif <-> 3f203000.i2s mapping ok
My audio settings are:Audio Output device = ALSA: Default (snd_rpi_hifiberry_digi S/PDIF)
Output configuration = Best Match
Sampling rate = 48
Stereo upmix = off
Normalize levels on downmix = off
Resample quality = GPU accelerated
Keep audio devices alive = 1 Minute
Play GUI sounds = Only when playback stopped
Enable passthrough =On
Passthrough output device = ALSA: Default (snd_rpi_hifiberry_digi S/PDIF)
Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver = On
Enable Dolby Digital transcoding = OFF
DTS capable receiver = On -
HiFiBerry team Hi,
the messages in dmesg are not relevant here. As soon as the card is detected by ALSA, that's all the driver does. Sending the audio stream to the HiFiBerry Digi is the responsibility of OpenElec. Did the OpenElec developers have more idead how to debug this? Are you sure the files you want to play back have a native 5.1 DTS or Dolby Digital sound stream (not AAC or MPEG multichannel)?
Best regards
Daniel -
Striker Hi Daniel, thanks for the reply.
I'm still investigating with the OpenElec forum.
The reason I came back here is was because of the Digiberry errors in the dmseg output.
Just wanted to check if the meant something.
The files I play definitely have 5.1 DTS sound.
Also tried the AC3 test avi found here: Test AVI-AC3
With this file I only have sound over my 2 front speakers
I will keep you posted.
Best regards,
Michel -
Jens Hörburger Same problem here using OSMC as software on the raspberry.
Installation and configuration went well, everything worked perfect. OSMC settings shows the "ALSA: Default (snd_rpi_hifiberry_digi S/PDIF)" passthrough device.
I've connected the raspberry using a lightwire cable and testet the eletrical digital cinch outlet. Both cables leads to the same result.
I have some demo testfiles on my NAS. If I open the DTS file and check the audio properties of the mediaplayer, it shows "AC3 5.1) as audiostream. And my receiver shows "dolby digital 3/2.1" and the rear speakers are silent. Another testfile in Dolby Digital which shows the currently used speakers for the demo sound uses only the front speakers too :(
I will keep trying other things to get the full surround sound. If I find out something new, I will you know.
If you made it work, please let me know too :)
Cheers, Jens -
HiFiBerry team Hi Jens,
as far as I know, OSMC does not have the necessary patch for Kodi included and therefore do not support passthrough with the HiFiBerry Digi. Check out OpenElec.
Best regards
Daniel -
Jens Hörburger OK, good news. It looks like that the used demo file made some troubles or some troll modified the demo file in a way that only the front speakers were used, although the demo video shows that the sound have to come from the rear speakers.
Or perhaps the updates of OSMC which came in last night, have something to do with that. (Unfortunately I deleted all old test files and I do not find the old one any more.)
Nevertheless, today I've tried a lot of file from this platform:
http://www.demo-world.eu/dolby-dts-thx-wmv-distributor-trailers-sd/
and here are two files which make channel checks - and they are working PERFECTLY together with hifiberry and OSMC! :)
http://www.demo-world.eu/download-sd-trailers/?file=dolby_channel_check-DWEU.vob&pic=dolby_channel_check.jpg
http://www.demo-world.eu/download-sd-trailers/?file=dolby_orchestra-DWEU.vob&pic=dolby_orchestra.jpg
I tried a lot of other files to check the THX capability (man, the first THX file caused nearly a heart attack because it immediately started SO loud compared to the previous), different video container (WMV etc) and everything is fine.
Cheers,
Jens -
HiFiBerry team Ji Jens,
thanks for letting us know.
@Striker: Is it possible that you use the same broken demo files?
Best regards
Daniel -
pb I'm running a simular setup, and experiencing the exact same problems as mentioned by Striker.
Raspberry pi with openelec kodi 5.95.2 + hifiberry digi+ and a sony str-db930 connected through s/pdif.
My receiver shows that it's receiving a dolby digital signal but there's no sound. Never had a problem like this before. -
Yorick Nice to read that there are other people still using the str-db930, great receiver! and it’s still working after all those years.
I have the same problem with OSMC and the DIGI+ and the str-db930. No DD (DTS works). I hope there will be a patch soon for OSMC. -
HiFiBerry team Hi Yorik,
if DTS works, there must be some other issue with DD. Both format are just being sent without modification. Maybe you have some kind of format conversion enabled?
Best regards
Daniel -
Yorick Hi,
Transcoding is off, so I think no format conversion enabled.
Is there anything else I can test to make it work? -
HiFiBerry team I can't think of anything. Maybe somebody in the OSMC forum might have an idea what could be the problem in your case.
Best regards
Daniel -
pb Daniel, any thoughts on the problems both Striker and I are experiencing? I feel kinda stuck with a product that doesn't deliver what it's supposed to do.. -
HiFiBerry team We can't help here. We know that many customers use Dolby Digital and DTS without problems. As we're not the developer of the playback software, we cannot guarantee that it does exactly what you need.
However, if the board doesn't deliver what you want, you can use our money-back guarantee:
https://www.hifiberry.com/shop/money-back-guarantee/
Best regards
Daniel -
Striker Sorry for the delay, but somehow I didn't receive any messages that somebody posted a reply.
I've finaly managed to get 5.1 sound working. Because my SD-card got corrupted, and this seems to happenvery often, I've chosen to buy an USB3 stick and install openelec on it. I've copied the config files from the SD-card to the USB3 and booted the system. After this I ran a test and I had sound over all my speakers.
Config is exactly the same as on my SD-card (except booting setting).
Don't know what was the problem and why it works now, but this is how I got it working
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Niels Striker, can you please exactly explain what you did? I have the same problem and at wits end as to how to get the DD sound to work. DTS and Stereo no problem. But DD no sound at all.
Thanks!
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Andreas Gunzer Any news in this case?
I have the same problem!
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michu roztocz Sorry for digging up old thread, but I have registered here to report the same issue with similar receiver. I have Sony STR-DB930 and while stereo and DTS plays fine, I have no sound at all with DD.
We have that device since ~2000 and until today everything was able to play Dolby Digital: many PCs, 3 DVD players, our TV provider box, TV through its USB port.
I already tried OpenELEC and OSMC. I also tried (as suggested by Striker) to install OSMC on USB stick. I wasn't able to get DD output with none of these. Receiver reports that it is receiving sound in Dolby Digital, but speakers remain silent (I suppose that in case of STR-DB925 difference was that it was playing through 2 front speakers).
All that makes me think, that hifiberry somehow fails to comply with AC3 standard. I have little knowledge about it, but maybe there is something that is missing as with Yamaha A2 receiver?
It''s really sad approach to say "for others it works, so it's not our issue". For now I will try to buy HDMI -> TOSLink extractor and see if it works.
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HiFiBerry team Hi,
on some receivers you need to set the mode to Dolby Digital by hand. Unfortunately we can't say what's wrong in your setup as we don't have your receiver in our lab.
BTW: The Digi+ does not "comply" to any AC3 standard as it simply outputs the data that the application sends. It does not modify the data stream from the application in any way. For the Digi+, DD and AC3 are simply streams of digital data that will be send to the output.
Best regards,
Daniel -
michu roztocz I keep reading about this issue and it appears to be problem with Kodi itself and not Hifiberry board. I hope that it gets resolved someday, but for now I don't know if spending more money on something like that will make it work:
https://www.amazon.com/ViewHD-Extractor-Optical-Converter-VHD-H2HSAs/dp/B00KBHX072
Also, I have this receiver for more that 15 years. I know how to make it play DD ;) it has some problems with switching between DTS and Dolby Digital, but it does it automatically.
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