Problem with 5.1 sound

1st Official Post

    Hello All,

    I cannot find any solution to the following problem.

    I am using LibreElec 10 on Raspberry Pi 4 with Xonar U7 soundcard connected via USB 2.0 and an old Logitech X530 5.1 speakers connected by 3 analog RCA connectors.

    This setup was working fine for years. This means Kodi was properly decoding all 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound channels and outputting them to proper speakers. It was also upmixing stereo sound (like online radio or mp3s) to 5.1 so all speakers were in use.

    But sometime in the last couple of months something broke. No matter what settings I choose in audio configuration panel, I am only able to hear two front speakers (rear, center and LFE speakers produce no sound via Kodi).

    So far I checked these:

    • aplay -l
    Code
    card 2: U7 [Xonar U7], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: U7 [Xonar U7], device 1: USB Audio [USB Audio #1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: U7 [Xonar U7], device 2: USB Audio [USB Audio #2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

    card 2, device 1 is what I want (device 0 is headphone jack, device 2 is S/PDIF)

    • aplay -L

    it does show the surround51 mode I want to use

    • alsamixer - it does see the XONAR U7 card and it does report all surround speakers
      nothing is muted, the volume control works for the front speakers
    • speaker-test - D CARD=2,DEV=1 -c6

    This test does output sound to all 6 speakers BUT it lists the surround ones as Unused (or Unknown), so my guess is that there is something wrong here.

    So the question is, how can I make Kodi use all the speakers again?

    Regards

    Tomasz

    • Official Post

    Please select the S/PDIF variant of your USB audio interface (card 2 / device 2) on output device settings. Maybe an LE update did the switch to card 2 / device 1.