On 8/29/06, Joshua Boyd <jdboyd(a)jdboyd.net> wrote:
On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 07:51:14PM +0100, Andrew Lyon
wrote:
When playing media using mplayer or xine, and
outputting using
ac3/dts passthru spdif, if I pause and resume playback, or seek, there
are brief, horrible clicking noises when playback resumes, I assume
this is because the stream is interrupted and resumes wherever it left
off, so it outputs some garbage data that causes the noises.
Is there any way to prevent this? Perhaps it is possible to make alsa
dump the first 1/2 or even 1/4 second of audio that is played? That
would avoid the noises and I could live with a slight delay when
playback starts.
It is in part a problem with your AC3/DTS decoder. I have a creative
labs decoder (surround sound speaker set of some sort of built in
AC3/DTS decoder), and it has terrible clicking/cracking/popping sounds.
OTOH, the Dolby Digital decoder (Dolby DP564, a 2U reference decoder),
generally does not have such trouble.
My decoder is a yamaha dsp home cinema amp, it has generally been fine
with a range of sources, including spdif 5.1 sound from my windows
2003 server using onboard nforce audio, certainly ive not had the
"noise" problem I describe.
You may be right about it being caused by garbage in
the signal upon
restart. At least, such garbage would cause such trouble. If so, just
dumping the first 1/4 second or whatever won't automatically fix it,
since that could be throwing away the garbage, then likely the start of
the next AC3 or DTS packet as well. A better solution would be to
intelligently not transmit incomplete AC3 packets, which means it isn't
quite a true pass through anymore.
I see, and intelligently not transmiting incomplete packets could lead
to delays and would make the passthru much more complicated, it does
seem like a possible solution though.
I suggest you take this to the mplayer or xine mailing
lists.
I will do so, thanks your response.
Andy