Arch Linux

heidegger

Member

Registered: 2013-04-24

Posts: 89

Kodi Audio No Longer Working with lagging/freezing in 21.0-1 [SOLVED]

Reverting to 20.5-1 corrected the issue.
It seems to be related to forced Pipewire when things were working fine with Pulseaudio.
I'm happy to assist with any problem solving needed to help get the package back on track.
Note that I had the same problem on 3 separate machines running differing architectures and reverting the package immediately corrected the problem on all devices.

Thanks!

-H

Last edited by heidegger (2024-04-27 16:53:04)

cspack

Member

Registered: 2016-09-01

Posts: 29

Re: Kodi Audio No Longer Working with lagging/freezing in 21.0-1 [SOLVED]

I'm having the same issue. I'm still using pulseaudio but the only option in Kodi 21 settings for audio output device is pipewire. I don't know if they meant to remove pulseaudio support or if this is a bug.

deadite66

Member

Registered: 2015-06-13

Posts: 32

Re: Kodi Audio No Longer Working with lagging/freezing in 21.0-1 [SOLVED]

i did have an issue to on the update but my system is a mediapc on a hdmi tv, so solved it by totally removing puleaudio and pipewire.

but from searching the kodi forum i did see they have a command to force pulse.

'env KODI_AE_SINK=pulse kodi'

no idea if it will help you though.

Last edited by deadite66 (2024-04-15 20:28:50)

cspack

Member

Registered: 2016-09-01

Posts: 29

Re: Kodi Audio No Longer Working with lagging/freezing in 21.0-1 [SOLVED]

Thanks for the tip. I managed to get it working by starting kodi with --audio-backend=pulseaudio.

linesma

Member

Registered: 2021-04-25

Posts: 1

Re: Kodi Audio No Longer Working with lagging/freezing in 21.0-1 [SOLVED]

They have received several help requests on their forums about this issue. It is affecting the Flatpak install as well. They are planning to revert back to pulseaudio as default, and will hopefully push a patch soon. Until then, the advice is to start Kodi with the --audio-backend=pulseaudio option.

heidegger

Member

Registered: 2013-04-24

Posts: 89

Re: Kodi Audio No Longer Working with lagging/freezing in 21.0-1 [SOLVED]

I wanted to follow up with my solution and mark this topic solved.
I've been reverting the package every update and finally found the time to investigate the problem.
In my case, I had pipewire installed but I believe it was installed automatically on my system due to a dependency and was never set up completely.
Simply following the instructions here https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire allowed Kodi and other apps to use pipewire correctly and eliminated the lagging/freezing experienced in Kodi for me.

As I also use this machine for musical performance & recording, I've been reluctant to mess with the functional ALSA and pulseaudio.
However, it does seem that pipewire has advantages, making it worth investing the time to implement.

Thanks!
-H