Playback of Dolby Digital Plus on Dolby Digital/DTS-capable receiver

Hi everyone,

First of all I have to note that I have been using OSMC on my Raspberry PI (and ATV before that) for years and it has been really great - thanks a lot for the effort! Moreover, I would truly appreciate if someone could please help me a bit.

Setup:

  • Raspberry Pi 2 —(HDMI)—> TV —(Optical Audio)—> Audio receiver
  • Audio receiver has 5.1 speaker surround and is capable of decoding Dolby Digital (aka DD or AC3) and DTS.
  • Raspberry PI 2 runs OSMC. In Kodi System Audio Settings the Audio output device is “PI: HDMI” and “Allow passthrough” is enabled. In addition, under passthrough settings I have enabled the “Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver” and “DTS capable receiver” (as this is what my Audio receiver is capable of).

Problem:
When I play back video files with 5.1 surround audio encoded in Dolby Digital (AC3) or DTS, then passthrough works great and my Audio receiver lights up the respective logo (AC3/DTS) and decodes/plays back respective 5.1 surround perfectly. However, when I attempt to play back a video file with Dolby Digital Plus (aka DD+ or E-AC3) then I only get stereo. This makes sense as my Audio receiver does not support E-AC3 and as I have disabled the “Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC3) capable receiver” in Kodi System Audi Settings. If I enable the the “Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC3) capable receiver” in Kodi System Audi Settings and play back a video file with E-AC3 audio, then the audio is just annoying noise - again, as expected.

Question:
Is it possible to configure Kodi so that it would automatically transcode E-AC3 audio to AC3 or DTS whenever I would play back a video with E-AC3? Then my Audio receiver would be able to play back 5.1 surround properly (instead of stereo). If it is not possible to configure Kodi in such way, are there any budget alternatives, which could fix my problem (I really do not want to buy an expensive new Audio receiver capable of decoding E-AC3)?

Thanks,
Reinis

if you set channels to 2 you should see a option in the passthrough settings something along the lines of enable dolby digital transcoding.

Thanks @gromgsxr - that worked perfectly! Kodi is now outputting full 5.1 surround on my AC3-capable Audio receiver when I play back a file with audio encoded in E-AC3.