AAC 5.1 still broken on Plex in 2025 – forced to use Kodi

[SiX-P4cK]

Server Version#: 1.41.6
Player Version#: 10.26.1.123

Hi Plex team and community,

I’m a long-time Plex user and Plex Pass subscriber, and I really enjoy Plex overall. But in 2025, there’s still one major issue that’s been around for years and remains unfixed:
AAC 5.1 audio does not play properly on Google TV (formerly Android TV).

This has been a problem for so long that I’ve had to rely on Kodi instead — simply because Plex can’t handle AAC 5.1 properly on a modern surround system.

My setup:

• TV: Xiaomi TV Max 100 (2025 model, running Google TV, eARC enabled)
• AVR: Denon AVR-S970H connected via HDMI eARC
• Plex Media Server: Windows 11 desktop
• Client: Official Plex app on Google TV

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The issue:

When I play movies with AAC 5.1 audio, Plex:

• sends AAC 5.1 from the server to the player
• but the Google TV player sends only PCM 2.0 to the AVR, meaning no surround sound
• and there’s no built-in way to transcode AAC 5.1 to AC3 (Dolby Digital), which most AVRs support perfectly

To be clear: Other formats like AC3 and EAC3 work flawlessly, even with 5.1.2 Atmos playback.
But a large portion of media — especially downloaded or encoded content — uses AAC 5.1, so this is still a major problem that impacts everyday use.

Because of this, my home cinema setup doesn’t work properly with Plex, despite being 100% compatible with Dolby Digital 5.1.

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I even tried…

I attempted to manually fix the issue by creating custom profiles on the Plex server to force AAC > AC3 transcoding — but with no success.
The way Plex handles custom profiles is undocumented, inconsistent, and often results in errors like unknown or invalid profile.

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Meanwhile, Kodi handles it perfectly:

Using Kodi with plex plug-in on the same Google TV:

• AAC 5.1 is transcoded to PCM 5.1
• My Denon receiver displays PCM 3/2/.1
• And the sound comes out of all the correct speakers, as it should
• Kodi has a simple checkbox: “Enable Dolby Digital (AC3) transcoding” — and that’s exactly what Plex is missing
  
  

No hacks. No profiles. No frustration.

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Plex is meant to be premium, but…

I was really hopeful about the upcoming New Plex Experience, but if Plex still can’t handle basic multichannel playback correctly, it’s hard to see it as a serious home theater solution. They is also problems with the .m2ts file, need kodi to read them.

Honestly, it’s kind of embarrassing to pay for Plex Pass and still have to rely on free software like Kodi just to get proper 5.1 playback from modern files.

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Please, fix this.
It’s 2025. This should just work.

I’m happy to share logs, test files, or more details if needed. Let’s finally fix AAC 5.1 on Google TV — for real.

[NukMasta]

DTS-HD MA and TrueHD while they are at it would be nice

[SiX-P4cK]

indeed you have right:

Far from the regular L R C LFE Ls Rs

[SiX-P4cK]

So: re-encode all my exotic video AAC 5.1 to AC3 or plex add support to custom channel layout with AAC…

[SiX-P4cK]

Thanks — I actually tried re-encoding with ffmpeg using the -ac 6 flag, but unfortunately this doesn’t fix the channel layout information in MediaInfo.
After re-encoding that way, MediaInfo still shows either no layout or keeps the wrong layout (like C L R Ls Rs LFE), so afterwards we have no easy way to know which files are correctly fixed and which ones still have the broken layout.
That makes it really painful to track over a large library.

In the end, we decided to simply remap the channels properly with ffmpeg using channelmap, and then re-encode everything to AC3.
AC3 embeds the correct channel layout, MediaInfo shows it properly (L R C LFE Ls Rs), Plex plays it perfectly, and it actually ends up being faster to process than trying to fix AAC layouts one by one.