Posts by walteweiss

  • 5.1 Sound doesn’t work on my LibreELEC HTPC

    Sound Over HDMI

    I'm very new to the HTPC topic, so I was unaware of the thing you can use HDMI just for sound till — literally! — yesterday. By ‘HDMI works well: both graphics and sound’ I meant that when I connect my HDMI cable into TV, the TV outputs both audio and video. What I'm trying to achieve is to connect a regular 5.1 PC speakers (I have just lying around) into the motherboard.

    I may consider switching to HDMI sound, but I assume it'll have me switching to another speakers (=buying them, shipping them, much more complicated for me at this point). Would appreciate the links or suggestions towards this, I may be totally wrong and maybe there is a $10 converter, I don't understand much with sound.

    The MB Seems Not to Have a 5.1

    At this point someone suggested me that this motherboard doesn't look like it has 5.1 Analogue Sound. I've read on the online specification (not from the manufacturer though) that it has 7.1 output, but I assume that is from HDMI. I was very sure I've read it has both 5.1 Analogue Sound and 7.1 Digital (HDMI?), but this was from the Announcement Post years ago, even before the motherboard was released.

    So at this point I tend to believe this motherboard just doesn't have 5.1 Analogue Sound Output. While 3 jacks is enough for 5.1 (front + back + central/sub), all the other 5.1/7.1 Motherboards I have have 6 ports instead of 3.

    Possible Solutions

    If that's correct and the motherboard doesn't output 5.1 Sound from Analogue Output, I have not so many options:

    1. Change the motherboard: I have one with 6 ports, but it's obsolete (GA-K8N51GMF-RH, AMD Sempron 3000+, with 2GB of DDR1 RAM)
    2. Buy a PCI-E connected Sound Blaster with 5.1
    3. Switch to HDMI-sound, but I would not consider this option, if it'll be expensive and involve a lot of extra work.

    The Question Transformed

    So, if consider the solutions written above, my initial question could be transformed to:

    1. Will the obsolete hardware be useful, say, if I'll add a relatively modern GPU here? As far as I understand, I don't need RAM (my current HTPC uses barely 500 MB of RAM with LibreELEC and playing 1080P videos), and I don't need CPU (which is not as horrible, comparing to Raspberry Pi, for instance: it's x86/64 and beefier clock speed), since all the job is on GPU. Am I right here? Would LibreELEC work on an obsolete PC with modern GPU? (I'm going to try that out, since I have the motherboard and GeForce 560 Ti lying around).
    2. Will any PCI-E Sound Blaster will work well on LibreELEC (hence Linux)? Should I ask in Linux Hardware related communities? I don't understand a difference between a cheap $10 Sound Card from AliExpress, a $15 used Sound Card bought locally, or $50 Sound Card bought new, from a reseller here in Europe.
    3. What are the options for HDMI sound in general, and are there anything considering my setup? But as I've pointed earlier, if that's expensive / involves too much work, I would better consider this for the next setup I'm going to have with 4K, the next year at least.

    Would it better if I'll rephrase these questions to another threads, as initially this one is about my inability to turn on the 5.1?

    To mark this thread as resolved we may come to understanding whether LibreELEC would work fine with 5.1 out-of-the box on a proper hardware: which has 5.1 analogue output, with external Sound Blaster, with HDMI-connected sound. Or whether there something needs to be done in terms of Settings/Plug-ins.

    Thanks a lot for the help!

  • Is 2 GB of disk space enough for x86 installation?

    Quote from trogggy

    I have a reasonably sized library - 1200 films / 80 tv shows - and my Thumbnails folder is around 1.2GB.

    Location is storage/.kodi/userdata/Thumbnails.

    8GB should be plenty for most of us - it might fill up if you start making multiple backups.

    Thanks!

    At this point I have about 300+ films / 10 tv shows / a lot of music, I think 500+ GB of FLACs or something.

    My /storage is just 1.2 GB of 6.8 GB (which is 18%, with 5.6 GB free). Theoretically, the 2 GB drive would be enough for not-so-huge library. I think 8 GB would be enough for a very long time for me, and at the same

    As for the backups, I’m not doing them frequently, and I pull them with scp via SSH, so I don't store backups on the same machine, on the SSD. I would recommend doing this, if you're limited on space. And I think that's also safer, as if you'll have something with your disk, you'll have the copy in another place.

  • 5.1 Sound doesn’t work on my LibreELEC HTPC

    Hello everyone!

    I’ve completely finished my HTPC project and the last step was to setup a 5.1 stereo system, which failed to work: only 1 port of 3 works, two others don’t.

    All of the speakers work properly, and the problem is with my computer: either software or hardware. I assume it should be software, since there should be no reason for two port randomly be ‘broken’. HDMI works well: both graphics and sound.

    I want to try to fix this issue, but I have no idea where to start. Do you guys have any suggestions?

    ***

    My motherboard is:

    ZOTAC ION ITX G Synergy Edition Atom 330 GeForce 9400 M-ITX

    There are three ports, and only the one in the middle works.

    Part of the log with possibly relevant technical info is below.

    Possibly relevant Notices:

    • Starting Kodi (18.2 Git:18.2-Leia). Platform: Linux x86 64-bit
    • Using Release Kodi x64 build
    • Kodi compiled 2019-05-04 by GCC 8.2.0 for Linux x86 64-bit version 4.19.36 (267044)
    • Running on LibreELEC (official): 9.0.2, kernel: Linux x86 64-bit version 4.19.36
    • FFmpeg version/source: 4.0.3-Kodi
    • Host CPU: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU 330 @ 1.60GHz, 4 cores available

    Possibly relevant Warnings:

    • CSettingsManager: missing version attribute
    • Pulseaudio module module-allow-passthrough not loaded - opening PT devices might fail

    I found no relevant Errors.

    I’ve read:

    and I’ve tried both Settings as:

    • 5.1 + Passthrough OFF
    • 2.0 + Passthrough ON

    In both cases no 5.1 sound.

    So, again, where should I look? Is it a Linux thing (LibreELEC is built on top of Debian, isn’t it?), is it just a Kodi thing (so I should try to reconfigure some settings either from menu or from config file?), or is it something else?

  • Is 2 GB of disk space enough for x86 installation?

    Hello guys, excuse me for being away for that long, right after asking my question.

    Thanks for your replies at first!

    I've tried to work with 2 GB drives and it (seems like) works fine out of the box. I don't know whether there is a way of managing things somehow (with symlinks maybe), to have a bootable drive on that tiny SSD only, but it works for me, for a light system which I use only as a player, not having huge library, no add-ons, basically naked LibreELEC.

    As for the computer with much bigger library I took 8 GB drive for the same (one dollar more) price. I heard that should be enough, I'm playing around with that, and that looks enough, at least at this point. I'm not sure where LibreELEC hosts all the thumbnails though, and how much space they take.

  • Is 2 GB of disk space enough for x86 installation?

    Hello guys!

    I have been playing with LibreELEC the last week and it’s running great on my Atom-based x86 Motherboard, playing me 1080P and serving as some very basic file (Resilio) sync server from a Docker-container.

    I have a chance to get 2 GB SSD for it, should I?

    I’ve tried to backup my LibreELEC installation via settings and it took me less than 2 GB (during the backup process I have noticed it stores thumbnails somewhere inside the backup, which I probably don’t need to). Though my first backups were like 50…100 MB or so.

    I can either do a restore from my backup or try to do clean install and repeat the steps I need (won’t take too much time for me, since it’s very basic usage).

    Would just 2 GB storage be enough for my needs, or is it too little? And if it would be enough for the very basic installation, will it be cluttered with things like thumbnails and another type of cache over time? Is there an option to symlink those folders to my SATA-connected HDD?

    The reason of this solution is that I guess SATA interface would be better than USB Flash Drive (SATA 2 vs USB 2, actually).

    I can get new 120 GB SSD for cheap ($25), but this option will delay me on time by few weeks at least, due to various local reasons. Or I can get my (used now) 32 GB SSD, but much later, like by the end of the year. That’s why I’m considering this 2 GB option, as I thought right now maybe it’s the best option among USB and just a regular HDD.

    Would appreciate any thoughts on that! Cheers.