Raspberry Pi (Raspbian) Audio Passthrough

[ant_in_wales]

Happy Twixmas everyone!
I've started to use VLC on my Pi, which is connected via HDMI to my 5.1 Audio receiver.
Playback is excellent, but the only problem is that the Audio seems to be downmixing to stereo.
I've had a hunt through the menus (and the fora) for a "Passthru" option, but can't find one.
Ideally I'd like the VLC to ignore the Audio and just send it to the receiver to handle.
Is this possible?
Thank you, and Happy NuYear.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

For PA; the relevant setting lie inside PA, not VLC. For ALSA, there is a pass-through option in the VLC ALSA module.

[ant_in_wales]

Thank you very much for the reply, Remi (et Bonne Année?)

In VLC, I've selected Alsa(default Device) in Simple Audio Preferences.
In All, I've gone into Audio/Output and changed Output Channels to 5.1.
But I can't find Passthru, and it's now crackling.

I'm sorry to bother you, but where is Passthru?

Would I be better off changing PulseAudio?
Which is the best add-in for this?

Thanks again
Tony

[st0rmforce]

I have the same problem, I assume it's the same for anybody trying this.
I found that omxplayer has a -p option which works correctly, but omxplayer is outdated (it can do audio passthrough, but can't do many codecs), so I want to move my media player over to use VLC.
I took a look on the Windows version and the passthrough option is right there, but not on RP. I spent a couple of hours fiddling around with ALSA and Pulse, but no luck. I almost had something: I disabled the audio output in the pulseaudio mixer, then set the output in VLC to use S/PDIF when possible and it was able to pass through a DTS test clip I've got. But AC3/E-AC3 are still being downmixed to PCM.

All the while, omxplayer -p is sitting there taunting me that it is possible.