Intermittent audio dropouts

I have been having strange audio issues for quite a while now with my Vero V. It is connectd to a Denon AVR-S760H via a high quality HDMI cable, which is then connected to an LG OLED TV via another high quality HDMI cable. My current speaker setup is a 5.1 surround system (the types of speakers are irrelevant for this issue, I imagine).

My issue is this: when I play audio files via Kodi on the Vero V, I will experience audio cut-outs somewhat frequently. What I mean by that is that during the audio playback, the sound will cutout for 1-3 seconds and then resume (almost as if the AVR was muted temporarily).

I have done a great deal of experimentation and have discovered that if I leave Settings > Audio > Output configuration set to Fixed, audio plays perfectly fine at all times. If I switch it to either Optimized or Best Match (to take advantage of audio passthrough, among other things), I experience the dropouts. None of the other settings seem to have any effect, and this occurs when playing any type of audio file (mp3, flac, etc).

I have noticed that the AVR shows a signal loss during the dropout (that is, the DIG and PCM indicators on the front turn off while the dropout is happening). I have also connected the Vero directly to my TV and observed the same audio droputs. If I use an optical cable to my AVR, no dropouts occur. However, I would like to be able to use HDMI for the audio pass-through (unless this isn’t actually worthwhile, I’m afraid I don’t know enough about DTS or the other codecs to know if its really worth it with my setup).

My solution for now is to use the Fixed setting, but would ideally like to be able to use audio passthrough (though, once again, if this isn’t actually valuable with my speaker count and configuration, I would love to be educated). I will also say that I have enable debug logging (as well as component specific logging) and haven’t noticed anything abnormal when the dropouts occur. I’d be happy to upload logs if it would help though.

Without logs, it is hard to advise, so please upload them.

If you can upload a log where things work as expected (Fixed) vs Optimised and Best Match that would be interesting.

Working on logs now. I have also just noticed another interesting tidbit: any audio with a sample rate higher than 44.1 kHz plays flawlessly. That is to say, playback of stuff with 48kHz all the way to 192kHz plays without issue. Any track encoded at a sample rate of 44.1kHz exhibits the skipping, and since 44.1kHz is the standard for CD audio, that is most of the content I own.

When playing CDs, set your GUI resolution to 1080p60. We know there are issues with 44.1k audio with 4k or 1080p120 video.

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Ha, I am using 1080p120…. Interesting, I’ll give it a try!

That was the issue! After switching to 1080p60, I haven’t encountered any more drop-outs. Thank you, @grahamh!

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You’re very welcome. This issue has come, gone and come back again with successive updates of the system. No-one has yet pinpointed the bug but we’ll keep trying. Thankfully, 4k videos with 44.1kHz PCM audio are rare but they do exist.

Also, I tried a 1080p120Hz GUI recently and it does seem smoother.

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