Playing back opus 5.1/7.1 does not work (center channel is missing)

[ebr 14903]

I was a little confused by your last detailed post.  Are you saying those symptoms are occurring using Kodi as well?

[Tupsi 4]

Sorry, if I confused you. To answer your latest question: No, they do not occure with Kodi as well.

 

In Kodi everythings works as it should, thats why I keep bringing this up, because I have serious doubts that either my hardware (reciever) nor my encode is the issue here, but simply how the emby firetv app pumps out the channels. Somehow something gets fucked up there in the decode, so I humbly ask you to check this again. 

 

@@Luke

my test show the full issue with opus and a partly with vorbis (which with my setup is only distinguisable with headsets when everything gets squished down to 2.0). See my post #23 for details.

 

 

As I already told you with screenshots and all, my reciever gets 6 channels from the app, but from I can hear there is nothing in the center at all besides some surround sounds, so my assumption is that the decode for opus (and partly vorbis) fucks up the channel ordering or puts out like one of the surround channel twice in that overriding the real center channel.

 

As I told you it is NOT happening when the app (or the server, dont know your tech details) is downmixing my 5.1/7.1 opus audio to stereo, because I playback my stuff on a normal TV which only reports stereo back to the plugged in fireTV. Then I can hear everything fine. There seems only be a problem with sending out the channels in there raw output. Something is not right there.

 

I listening closely to all my 7 speakers and even tried my ears near the sub in order to hear the conversation which normaly takes place in the center, but its not there.

 

Not sure how much else I can describe the problem, but if I can be of any help, please let me know as I do not wanna give up opus as audio encode just yet, its just to good to be ignored.

[Tupsi 4]

So I finally convinced a friend of mine to buy a FireTV which he installed emby on and connected it to his 9.1 setup. After playing back my testfile from my emby server it has the same issues (no dialogue in the center speaker) I describe here, so I doubt this is the fault of my playback equipment but a bug in how the emby app puts the pcm channels to the receiver.

 

The user ieblj01 describe a similar problem in his post today. It is worded differently, but in essence describes my problem as well, something is wrong in how the emby app handles opus multichannel audio.

 

Please have another look at this.

 

If you need a test file, please let me know.

[ebr 14903]

Hi.  Opus audio is currently only supported via an extension to the player that we use.  Perhaps a player update will improve it as we will be doing that in the beta channel soon.

 

Thanks.

[Tupsi 4]

Hi.  Opus audio is currently only supported via an extension to the player that we use.  Perhaps a player update will improve it as we will be doing that in the beta channel soon.

 

Thanks.

 

Can I raise my hand somewhere to get that beta version? I also some screenshots from a 1.7.60g (where I am still on 1.7.53a) where that user could enable/disable passthrough options, so I guess thats maybe it?

[Luke 37006]

Can I raise my hand somewhere to get that beta version? I also some screenshots from a 1.7.60g (where I am still on 1.7.53a) where that user could enable/disable passthrough options, so I guess thats maybe it?

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/24350-android-open-beta-testing/

[ieblj01 3]

I am joing this thread as well as OPUS Audio center channel 5.1/7.1 is broken for me as well.  I just went through the Amazon communication hoops and PM'd ebr.

[Tupsi 4]

@ieblj01 feels good to finaly see someone else acknowleding this problem, so thank you!

For the record, I made a bug report over at ExePlayer, here is the link for reference:

https://github.com/google/ExoPlayer/issues/8396

 

[ebr 14903]

8 hours ago, Tupsi said:

For the record, I made a bug report over at ExePlayer, here is the link for reference:

https://github.com/google/ExoPlayer/issues/8396

Thanks.  Let's see what they have to say.

[Tupsi 4]

finaly got someone to listen to my sample over there. From what I got back so far ExoPlayer itself does NOT decode opus by default but relies on the platfrom decoders, where the bug itself seems to be. So I seem to be out of luck over there as well, trying to get it fixed. BUT they told me about extension you guys could activate/use inside ExoPlayer itself to force the Player to not use the platform decoder, but a bundled ffmpeg extension. The relevant quote from over there is this:

 

Quote

ExoPlayer does not decode itself media, it uses the platform decoders (aka the Opus decoder bundled by Amazon in the FireTV os), and optionally ffmpeg if bundled.

If that platform opus decoder has a channel mapping bug, your best way to avoid the issue would be to ask the emby app to use the ExoPlayer extension to offer the option to use ffmpeg instead of the platform decoder.

and to move away from a "FireTV" point of view; I bought a shield in the meantime and the bug is there as well.

 

So I would like to ask you @ebr to look into the option to bundle and activate that extension for ExePlayer for at least opus audio in emby.

 

[ebr 14903]

Hi.  We already bundle that but, if your system says it supports OPUS it is going to use the internal one.  We would have to come up with a way to override that which we can look into.

First, can you please try the current beta of the app (on the Shield) and see if it behaves differently?

[Tupsi 4]

8 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi.  We already bundle that but, if your system says it supports OPUS it is going to use the internal one.  We would have to come up with a way to override that which we can look into.

First, can you please try the current beta of the app (on the Shield) and see if it behaves differently?

uh beta, right. I think I jumped through the hoops for getting the beta on FireTV, still have to look that up howto that on real android. Over at google the finaly succumbed to my persistance and now believe me that it is a bug in the platform decoder and has to be fixed. At least something

 

[ebr 14903]

16 hours ago, Tupsi said:

uh beta, right. I think I jumped through the hoops for getting the beta on FireTV, still have to look that up howto that on real android. Over at google the finaly succumbed to my persistance and now believe me that it is a bug in the platform decoder and has to be fixed. At least something

 

Hi.  It is easier to test the beta on your Shield...

[Tupsi 4]

2 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi.  It is easier to test the beta on your Shield...

indead, found the post and then just downloaded it.

current beta is the same, nothing changed.

[Tupsi 4]

just to clarify this thread I updated the tags above. This is not a "FireTV" issue, but a general Android one. Google is working on it as I finally found someone over there who believed me, that I was not totally nuts, but that just the programmer doing the opus decode in android had a hicup and switched a few channels. So keep your fingers crossed that this will get fixed in an android update at some point in the future and maybe even gets down the ancient android versions amazon and NVIDIA use (thats me being overjoyfull sarcastic).

 

 

[ebr 14903]

Please try this with the latest beta version of the app (1.8.69).

[Tupsi 4]

16 hours ago, ebr said:

Please try this with the latest beta version of the app (1.8.69).

how long does it take for a new version to show up in the store? My shield still thinks 1.8.68g is the latest version.

[ebr 14903]

1 hour ago, Tupsi said:

how long does it take for a new version to show up in the store? My shield still thinks 1.8.68g is the latest version.

It varies wildly but, lately, a couple days.

[Tupsi 4]

53 minutes ago, ebr said:

It varies wildly but, lately, a couple days.

ok, just saw your release notes about the opus change, so will report back once I have it installed.

 

[Tupsi 4]

On 1/18/2021 at 10:24 PM, ebr said:

Please try this with the latest beta version of the app (1.8.69).

this fixes it for me, awesome!

Could you leave that in until its fixed google side on the underlying android (we both know this could take a while)?

 

[ebr 14903]

I don't see any reason why we can't leave it how it is for now.