The HifiBerry issue is unrelated, and will be resolved for all users temporarily in an update tonight. For now you can find instructions on how to fix on the forum.
After receiving the latest update notification on the system today I thought I’d give it another shot, however still no luck, also not with bluetoothctl. Sometimes the connection via bluetoothctl worked but only momentarily so before seeing:
[CHG] Device AC:9B:0A:12:EB:26 Connected: no
Most times the result of a manual connect looked like this:
[bluetooth]# connect AC:9B:0A:12:EB:26
Attempting to connect to AC:9B:0A:12:EB:26
Failed to connect: org.bluez.Error.Failed
Sometimes it did connect but only for 10 seconds or so before showing that it was disconnected again.
The one thing I did notice is that since today’s update the My OSMC menu seems to run into a timeout initially as moving down the list from Wired to the other options doesn’t update the right side of the screen until about 20~30 seconds in (or turning off my Bluetooth headset):
Does this work with the pi3?
Yes – but see the top of the thread. You may have issues with the internal adapter.
So I’ve had the issue that others have had with the hifiberry, but with my phatdac. I installed the update from the other night but my phatdac is still not available from the system audio.
I’m using a rpi3 and internal BT
Hoping I haven’t missed the solution in this thread
Hi there all.
An update: I have successfully managed to get 5.1 channel sound to pass from my RPi3 to a Hisense TV and then via ARC to a basic Samsung home theatre system. My problem in getting this to work – Hisense TV needed a firmware update. HDMI cable version and quality made no difference to my setup. I hope this helps someone. Just update everything and make sure the CEC (or equivalent) is enabled on the TV and that the TV actively identifies the home theatre system.
I have one further problem:
My setup — RPi 3 to TV via HDMI; TV to a basic Samsung home theatre system via ARC; Sourround sound working with passthrough for movies played in OSMC.
Audio via a2dp however only plays out of two speakers on the home theatre system
I have tried every permutation of settings — passthrough, channel numbers, upmixing, dsp processing…
Please will someone who has successfully managed to have music via Bluetooth upmixed to 5.1 and sent to a home theatre system share their audio settings with me.
Home theatre set to “DSP off” thus allowing the Pi to do all the upmixing.
This would be much appreciated.
Not clear what you are expecting to be doing the upmix. A2dp is stereo only, so the upmix must be downstream of the BT link, if it’s possible at all.
We don’t upmix. Kodi settings also won’t matter as BT audio isn’t actually going through Kodi.
If you want upmixing you need to use your AV, which will do a better job than OSMC could.
Sam
Or create a custom alsa device? Except I think HDMI is not accessed through alsa.
Thanks guys. I appreciate your advice — this has saved me much time.
If I were to play an mp3 directly within Kodi would this be amenable of upmixing to 5.1 channels?
Thanks.
Any stereo you send through HDMI to yr receiver could be upmixed by the receiver. Shouldn’t matter whether it’s from Kodi or from bluetooth.
There is an ALSA sink through HDMI
PulseAudio < 5.x can do BT → ALSA direct, which is marvellous. After this, PulseAudio was introduced (which is a shim) and this complicates matters further.
Sam
Sadly I have found that two Samsung receivers, hk4500 and hk5500, are unable to upmix well. The best setting is “Cinema” which results in sound from left, right, centre and sub. No rear surround speakers.
Hence my desire to upmix from within Kodi and have no processing / less processing by the receiver.
I must admit this is above my level of understanding.
What I can be sure of is that there would be great utility in a simple method of upmixing of BT audio to 5.1 channels for output via HDMI for use in low end home theatre systems which have no digital inputs other than 1 HDMI port.
The above sadly represents all affordable receivers available in South Africa. The jump to devices which have component inputs represents a 10x price increase 
I can’t afford more than two loudspeakers but if I find a solution I’ll let you know.
Morning all,
I’m unable to get audio to route to the 3.5mm jack
I am running an up to date osmc on an old but trusted Pi b (showing bcm2835 @ 850mhz), with osmc Bluetooth dongle (which fixed my initial play issues with a2dp)
I am pairing with command line as my apple devices don’t seem to want to find the osmc Bluetooth.
Throughout this thread there are mentions of playing audio through hdmi and 3.5mm jack streamed from an iPhone or similar.
This is the bit I can’t get to work. Pi is setup to output to both, and if I have both turned on then Kodi sounds do come out of both so I know both paths and my amp are working.
everything is as per install apart from one setting I found in this thread about adding dtparam=audio=on to config.txt. I tried the amixer posts but it wasn’t recognised.
This thread mentions many people having this work but I don’t think on my Pi version.
Any insights would be appreciated.
N.b osmc Bluetooth dongle and a2dp works great as advertised, it cuts out occasionally but that is likely due to power as it is running from the Pi and I need to get it a powered USB hub.
Just to clarify Alistair – are you saying you want audio from BT to 3.5 output on the Pi (no DAC or anything)?
Morning Sam
Yes, the on board 3.5 jack. It seemed like it should just work from this thread, hence me wandering if I’m just running older hardware and the setting that’s in place isn’t quite doing it. Does that make sense?
it plays fine through hdmi, and kodi is set to output to both.
Alistair
Try amixer cset numid=3 2. Might need to sudo apt-get install alsa-utils first.
Sam