LibreELEC 9.0 alpha builds not working at all

Every other week I'm giving the latest version a try, but so far none did work for me. It will always just play some seconds of video (if any at all) and the video will freeze. I also built the VDR vnsi driver and it can successfully connect to the VDR server, but also will freeze when playing video. Kodi is reporting errors and errors. Any idea what's wrong here? LE 8.2.3 works like a charm on the very same hardware.

If the behaviour is to be expected because of the alpha status, please just ignore this post. But quite some people seem to be running the alpha successfully, so I thought it would be good to report that at least on the Z83 mini PC it does not work at all right now.

Quote from CvH

Hmm unexpected result as LE8.2 is working, the log complains about missing sound output

did you tried an Milhousebuild if the same happens there ?

LibreELEC Testbuilds for x86_64 (Kodi 18.0)

Unfortunately exactly the same behaviour.

Kernel log. I also noticed that this error no longer shows up with the new kernel. But is probably unrelated anyway. And ALSA is always reporting "No soundcards found.", but sound output via HDMI is working fine with 8.2.3

It's definitely a kernel bug. I just built 9.0 alpha with kernel 4.11.12 (that had been used in LE 8.2.3) and the problem is gone. Really like the improved seeking and skipping in videos; much more instant and reliable!

Live TV also (mostly) works. I just cannot switch channels by using up and down keys. But when picking from the channel list, I can switch to any channel.

kodi.log still contains this scary line:

ERROR: CAESinkALSA::Initialize - failed to initialize device "Default"

But sound is working just fine.

Next I'm trying to find out why building goom is failing.

Quote from Schreibwaise

ERROR: CAESinkALSA::Initialize - failed to initialize device "Default"

I know self-follow-ups are lame, but this error message gave me another idea: I just re-installed the latest milhouse build and explicitly tried to set the audio output. With the newer kernel, I have two more options and guess what: One of them is working just fine (it is HDMI#2 which did not exist with kernel 4.11.12).

And channel switching in Live TV works just fine by using page up/down instead of cursor up/down. So not a regression, but a dumb user (usually I'm using a remote and no keyboard, so I got it wrong).

Quote from Schreibwaise

I know self-follow-ups are lame, but this error message gave me another idea: I just re-installed the latest milhouse build and explicitly tried to set the audio output. With the newer kernel, I have two more options and guess what: One of them is working just fine (it is HDMI#2 which did not exist with kernel 4.11.12).

Just for completeness and in case somebody else also is running into this issue: Older kernels had an incomplete implementation for this sound chip and it was working just by luck. With newer kernels one needs to explicitly choose the device; however you will get distorted sound and not be able to control volume correctly. This can be fixed with this asound.conf.

As soon as this patch is in the kernel, the sound driver can be persuaded to behave just like the older, incomplete one, so you can simply use the default sound device. Just add options snd_hdmi_lpe_audio single_port=1 to some configuration file in ~/.config/modprobe.d.

However I have to admit that my vero4k seems to run much more stable and seems to provide a better, smoother picture than this Z83 mini PC.