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+-- Forum: Hardware (/forum-7.html)
+--- Forum: Video and Audio (/forum-28.html)
+--- Thread: What's the difference between Xbian's audio and others? (/thread-2819.html)
What's the difference between Xbian's audio and others? - flanker - 8th Mar, 2015 03:50 AM
Hey there, I recently got into raspberry. My first raspberry device is a Pi 2. After some blood sweat and tears I managed to set it up asa NAS, Torrent Client and Web Server. Very happy with it.
Then, I discovered whole media center stuff. Bought another Pi 2 and set it up with OpenElec(don't hate. I wasn't even aware of xbian then). Spent a few nights on it, and manged to make it work just the way I wanted.... Except for one tiny, yet extremely frustrating problem...
I live in an apartment and usually watch movies at night. So I can't just blast the sound from my TV. I figured i'd try my bluetooth headset. Didn't work. From what I understand A2DP profile hasn't made its way to Kodi just yet(which is strange considering 10 years old Nokias has it). So without much hope, I pluged my Logitech G930(USB wireless gaming headset) and it worked!
I was elated. Immediately loaded a movie and started watching. 5 minutes in I noticed popping/cracking sounds. I'm not stranger to this phenomenon. I experienced same thing with this headset before on windows(logitech fixed it with a driver update). I fiddled with every setting on OpenElec(network buffer, sampling rate, channel number etc) Nothing helped.
After two days, I decided to experiment with other OSes. First I tried OSMC which look cool as f**k, but riddled with bugs(not surprising, considering it's still early beta). Anyway, popping sound was there. So I decided (without much hope) to check what other OSes were out there.
Long story short,I found xbian. No popping. Audio is crystal clear. So I decided to stay with xbian
. Problem is, from my personal experience, xbian is at least as buggy as OSMC. As of right now; youtube , flixanity or any other addon that streams video over the net doesn't work(found this thread, apearently devs are aware of the problem). Pi restarts on it's own, UI is choppy, getting frequent crashes, video player stops playing movie on it's own and crashes to home screen etc... All in all, not having a great time with xbian
...So my questions are:
1)Does xbian has a stable release? I've found mentions of Xbian v 1.0 stable. But couldn't find links to it. Also considering currently we are at v14, is v1.0 an ancient release?
2)What's the difference between xbian and all the other Kodi OSes? I think it might have something to do with Pulse Audio(which Open Elec uses) and Alsa(which xbian uses?) If that is really the only difference, is there a way to make OpenElec use whatever xbian uses for sound?
3)Am I only one who uses his media center with headphones? It's weird that there is pretty much no information about this specific subject.
4)If anyone uses wireless sound, how do you accomplish that? I guess those analog FM headsets would work. But their sound quality is abysmal. I'd like to avoid them if possible. Also, I've tried pluging g930 dongle to my tv and use it as an audio source. Didn't work.
Anyway. thanks for the hard work you guys put to this project. Whether I stay with xbian or migrate to another distro, at the very least you guys made me realize that there was a solution to my problem
Cheers,
Can
Ups. Sorry. I didn't realize this was the hw forum. Move it to sw forum if necessary.
RE: What's the difference between Xbian's audio and others? - rikardo1979 - 8th Mar, 2015 06:19 AM
all your problems are not related to our OS. for more than sure it is somewhere in your setup, most likely it is your hardware
What is XBian? Well at least you could start from here http://www.xbian.org/what-is-xbian/
XBian has custom Debian build under the hood, not like other distros which serve only as media players. XBian is a full OS
Sound? Alsa vs something? nowhere near as for default HDMI or build in Analog audio out alsa is not used. That is only for external sound card connected through USB for example
BT audio and other wireless stuff is not very common, to be honest guys like you who would like to use this with RPi can be counted on one hand
RE: What's the difference between Xbian's audio and others? - flanker - 8th Mar, 2015 06:29 AM
(8th Mar, 2015 06:19 AM)rikardo1979 Wrote: all your problems are not related to our OS. for more than sure it is somewhere in your setup, most likely it is your hardware
What is XBian? Well at least you could start from here http://www.xbian.org/what-is-xbian/
XBian has custom Debian build under the hood, not like other distros which serve only as media players. XBian is a full OS
Sound? Alsa vs something? nowhere near as for default HDMI or build in Analog audio out alsa is not used. That is only for external sound card connected through USB for example
BT audio and other wireless stuff is not very common, to be honest guys like you who would like to use this with RPi can be counted on one hand
Logitec G930's dongle is an external audio card
By no mean I'm an expert on unix let alone Kodi, but since OpenElec, OSMC and Xbian are all based on Kodi, I think it's safe to assume they all have similar(if not same) systems running on background.
I'm aware OpenElec is stripped to barebones. But it still runs for example the same CEC plugin Xbian uses. Also they all use OMXPlayer.
Basically my question is, what's the difference between Xbian's audio system and other Kodi based OSes.
Re: What's the difference between Xbian's audio and others? - f1vefour - 8th Mar, 2015 08:09 AM
It is hard to say what is different since we don't use or develop the other Pi OS's, I have experience with OpenELEC and it is totally different. It is more like LFS (Linux From Scratch), each piece has to be updated manually on the development side and it only supports monolithic upgrades.
We are Debian apt based where any package can receive updates at any time, Kodi is just a program like Windows Media Center on Windows. We aren't based on Kodi, sort of the opposite really as we want you to be able to install and run any Linux application that has ARM support. You chose to try XBian at a rare moment where we are suffering through Kodi (XBMC) issues, it isn't our fault streaming broke but it is fixed in the latest update.
It is not possible to use a Bluetooth headset with Kodi, this is a Kodi limitation. Your other issues sound like they may be related to a power supply issue.
RE: What's the difference between Xbian's audio and others? - flanker - 8th Mar, 2015 09:15 AM
(8th Mar, 2015 08:09 AM)f1vefour Wrote: It is hard to say what is different since we don't use or develop the other Pi OS's, I have experience with OpenELEC and it is totally different. It is more like LFS (Linux From Scratch), each piece has to be updated manually on the development side and it only supports monolithic upgrades.
We are Debian apt based where any package can receive updates at any time, Kodi is just a program like Windows Media Center on Windows. We aren't based on Kodi, sort of the opposite really as we want you to be able to install and run any Linux application that has ARM support. You chose to try XBian at a rare moment where we are suffering through Kodi (XBMC) issues, it isn't our fault streaming broke but it is fixed in the latest update.
It is not possible to use a Bluetooth headset with Kodi, this is a Kodi limitation. Your other issues sound like they may be related to a power supply issue.
Hey there. Thanks for the informative reply. I'm beginning to understand that OpenElec is really a different animal. I think similar(exactly similar?) appearances of the home screens made me think, they are the same thing. While in reality one is like an OS other is a WM image.
Reality of OpenElec just sunk in a few hours ago, when I tried to apt-get alsa-utils and was greeted with a very informative message about why I couldn't do it...
Yes, I've noticed the stream fix. I've been trying to make Xbian work the way I want it to for a few hours(since It looks like I'll be staying with xbian for the foreseeable future).
I think you might be right about the insufficient power supply too. I've been noticing rainbow box for a few days. Just realized what it meant... Swapped the crappy adapter for original Samsung Note adapter. Box is gone now. I'll check tomorrow if it fixed freezing problems for good.
Again thanks for the reply.
Cheers
Can
EDIT: Ahh hell, I was just watching a youtube video and Xbian crashed just when the video ended. And by crashed, I mean "not accepting any input" type of crash. I wonder if it might be an SD card problem. Card is a brand new Sandisk 16GB Class 10. But, who knows? I'll try with a different card and a fresh install tomorrow. I'll also enable logging.