Audio Output to HDMI only, possible?

LE.User934 · October 12, 2022 at 6:22 AM

LibreELEC (official): 9.0.2 (LePotato.arm) on AML-S905X-CC

I would like to have Kodi use the HDMI audio output only. But want to keep an analog set of speakers plugged into the 3.5mm Jack for other use (netcat raw audio). I have done this on a RPi2. nc -lp <port> | aplay -Dhw:1,0

Is it possible to do this on this AmLogic board?

I have tried all the settings in the Kodi UI, but audio seems to output simultaneously on both regardless of the Kodi settings.

I tried selecting HDMI and the GUI click sounds do only output to the HDMI (no sound from analog speakers), but then playing a video results in no sound from any device.

Would buying a USB to 3.5mm adapter work?

Code

LePotato:~/.kodi/userdata # aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: AMLM8AUDIO [AML-M8AUDIO], device 0: I2S.42 T9015-audio-hifi-0 []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: AMLM8AUDIO [AML-M8AUDIO], device 1: SPDIF.43 dit-hifi-1 []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: AMLM8AUDIO [AML-M8AUDIO], device 2: PCM.44 pcm2bt-pcm-2 []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0


LePotato:~/.kodi/userdata # aplay -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
default:CARD=AMLM8AUDIO
    AML-M8AUDIO, 
    Default Audio Device
sysdefault:CARD=AMLM8AUDIO
    AML-M8AUDIO, 
    Default Audio Device
hdmi:CARD=AMLM8AUDIO,DEV=0
    AML-M8AUDIO, 
    HDMI Audio Output

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Jaaxx suggested in 2017 that Amlogic ignores Kodi audio output selection and just outputs to all devices. But has this changed since Krypton? I'm on Leia now, and the beta of LE20 still had the same issue.

Thanks.

**chewitt** · October 12, 2022 at 4:30 PM Best Answer

The USB audio card route would be best, as this provides an independent soundcard to route audio to. I'm not sure if the current behaviour is hardwired in hardware (in the SoC) or in the kernel, but I suspect the former if both legacy and modern kernel images behave the same, as those kernel codebases have almost zero driver code in common.

**Da Flex** · October 12, 2022 at 5:32 PM

Quote from LE.User934

Would buying a USB to 3.5mm adapter work?

Yes, you'll find some working USB devices here: Click!

With USB audio you are able to select HDMI or USB on LE's audio output settings.

LE.User934 · October 12, 2022 at 5:42 PM

Quote

With USB audio you are able to select HDMI or USB on LE's audio output settings

Using a USB audio adapter, it shows up in "aplay -l" and aplay -L", but still does not show up in the LE audio output settings. But that's fine, I only want HDMI audio output for Kodi/LE

It's disappointing that the amlogic boards do this and I needed to buy additional hardware, but I can see this is an edge case.

I got a USB to 3.5mm analog audio adapter based on the SS1629 chip for $15. (Plugable brand), and used nc -lp <port> | aplay -D plughw:1,0

This works. Thank you.

**Da Flex** · October 12, 2022 at 6:04 PM

Quote from LE.User934

Using a USB audio adapter, it shows up in "aplay -l" and aplay -L", but still does not show up in the LE audio output settings. But that's fine, I only want HDMI audio output for Kodi/LE

I see USB audio on RPi's audio settings, so it's probably a Le Potato bug.

You can try a newer image from chewitt to avoid this: Click!

**chewitt** · October 18, 2022 at 8:09 AM

There shouldn't be anything different between RPi and Amlogic in terms of USB audio support.

Audio Output to HDMI only, possible?

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