What's the story with NUCs and HD audio?

1st Official Post

    Hi guys.

    I finally replaced my trusty old Denon 3803 with a Marantz 7013.

    I have a NUC6CAYH running LE 8.2.5

    I wanted to try out some of the DTS-MA movies I have available. I couldn't get audio to work with any HD audio movie. (Actually - DD+ didn't work too!).

    DD and DTS work fine.

    I started RTFMing but couldn't find a definite answer.

    Is HD audio a firmware issue that will be resolved only by fixing the hdmi firmware on the nuc? (as per Download HDMI Firmware Update Tool for Intel® NUC Kit NUC7i3BN, NUC7i5BN, NUC7i7BN, NUC6CAY)

    Is there a LE version that will just "fix it" without requiring this patch?

    The reason I am asking is that installing the hdmi patch requires that I'll download and install windows 10. It's a big PITA (considering I have no HD on my NUC and the installation time). I don't want to go through this trouble without making sure this is indeed the solution.

    Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!

    Thanks.

    What do you mean by "correctly"? Any special configuration required other than checking the "receiver can accept dts-ma, dolby hd and dd+" checkboxes?

    Intel NUC DC53427HYE

    Pioneer Elite AVR VSX-23TXH

    Sony KDL-48W580B TV

    All above connected via HDMI

    Kodi Audio Settings:

    - Audio Output Device: ALSA : HDA Intel PCH, PIO VSX-23TXH

    - Number of Channels: 5.1

    - Allow Passthrough: Enabled

    - Passthrough Audio Device: same as above

    - All Receiver Mode checkboxes Enabled

    Thanks guys.

    My configuration:
    Intel NUC NUC6CAY

    Marantz SR7013

    Sony XBR-75X900E

    Connected through HDMI too


    Kodi Audio Settings:

    - Audio output device: ALSA: HDA Intel PCH, MJI marantz-AVR on HDMI #0

    - Number of Channels: 5.1

    - Allow Passthrough: Enabled

    - Passthrough Audio Device: same as above

    - All Receiver Mode checkboxes Enabled


    Quote from chewitt

    Update the NUC firmware. Update the Marantz firmware. Update to the current LE beta. Make sure "sync playback to display" is off.

    NUC firmware = hdmi firmware or bios? the former requires a windows 10 installation... :(

    I'll try LE beta.

    I'll upgrade the Marantz firmware

    "sync playback to display" is off.


    Thanks again guys.

    I upgraded to the latest bios.

    Marantz is with the latest firmware.

    - Still no HD audio.

    I then upgraded to the latest LE beta. Network stopped working completely. I enabled wifi on the bios and configured wifi. I connected via ssh and saw that eth0 is flapping between no link to 10mbps.

    After trying to lock the port at 1gbps with my switch (Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch 24POE) to no avail. I disconnected and reconnected the ethernet cable.

    The link came back at 1gbps and seems stable.

    HD Audio started working. I noticed some drops every once in a while and then it stopped working completely. No matter what I do DTS-HD will no longer work (worked in the first 2-3 attempts, same file no longer plays), Dolby TrueHD will work with dropouts and sometimes not at all (tons of dropouts for some files).

    Any idea what could it be?

    Thanks

    Put some HD Audio Movies on a USB thumb drive and connect it directly to your NUC. See if the audio plays correctly. If it does, then you most likely have a network problem.

    Thanks.

    It's not a network issue, I can easily watch 40mbps videos. These movies are only 10-15mbps video.

    Just for the test I did what you asked and the results are the same (the file was copied at 100MB/s to the local flash...)

    I decided to disable "Adjust display refresh rate" and everything started working again (I always have it on, I might have re-enabled it after the upgrade and forgot that it was after my tests... silly me).

    I still hear dropouts every once in a while, from my experience with audio from the Firewire days it sounds like samples are being dropped due to depletion of audio buffer (ie: probably too small buffer for the current hardware/drivers).

    So now I have 2 open issues:

    1. How to make the video look good without matching the refresh rate

    2. How to eliminate the audio dropouts.

    Thanks.

    Even though your NUC is running a Celeron (J3455) processor, it should have enough power to play most HD audio and video files up to 1080p. Are any of your files HEVC encoded ? Even my i5 processor has trouble with those files when FFing and RWing.

    Have you tried running Windows on your NUC ?

    Quote from blueribb

    Even though your NUC is running a Celeron (J3455) processor, it should have enough power to play most HD audio and video files up to 1080p. Are any of your files HEVC encoded ? Even my i5 processor has trouble with those files when FFing and RWing.

    Have you tried running Windows on your NUC ?

    Doesn't the J3455 support hardware acceleration up to HEVC 10-bit and with UHD resolutions (for decode if not output)? (Is this one of the CPUs that performance varies between single and dual channel RAM config?)

    My N3350 Up Squared board plays 2160p50 HEVC 10-bit stuff OK, and that's got the same Intel GPU and a dual core (the J3455 is quad core) CPU.

    My NUC can actually handle 2160p as well. It's not a CPU issue, the CPU is idle, everything is done by the hardware acceleration.

    I did not try Windows.

    I am suspecting a driver issue :/

    Something is totally off with my NUC, I now see artifacts on the image and I have audio dropouts in stereo as well... I'll revive the thread once I know what's going on