Convert AAC surround to PCM on the fly

[stokestack]

Hi all.

I'm encountering a growing number of ignorantly encoded video files, in that their audio has been converted from AC-3 to AAC.

Not surprisingly, A/V receivers do not play the audio from these files correctly; the center audio channel is missing. In fact, I'm curious as to why I'm even hearing the left & right channels.

I don't see any way to get VLC to send audio as PCM regardless of its source format. Given the increasing scale of the problem I'm reporting, it seems to me that this would be an increasingly important feature.

Or am I missing some other way to fix this? Thanks.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

VLC will always play AAC as PCM. I don't understand your issue. Also please try VLC 3.0

[ChicoCanada]

I have the same problem.

The video has an audio stream of MPEG AAC (mp4a) with 5 channels at 48000 Hz. I will not pass it as 5 channels PCM to my audio amplifier with VLC v3 but it does work fine with Kodi.

Cheers

[InTheWings]

No idea what you're trying to do.

AAC passthrough ? What does the hw expects.

In all cases, we have no conversion to AC3 yet.

[ChicoCanada]

The HW expects PCM of 5 channels. VLC is not playing AAC as PCM.

[InTheWings]

VLC has no AAC passthrough, so it never sends AAC to hardware. Only PCM in that case.

Don't use SPDIF