AC3 5.1 playback not working.

Dev Community Apps & Creations
1

A few days ago my Rasplex box offered to upgrade, and upgraded itself to 6.0. Then audio playback for some video files no longer worked. I now upgraded to 7.1 and I still have the same problem.

Basically any file where the sound channel is other than stereo is now silent.
I managed to temporarily solve this by disabling “Dolby Cabaple Receiver” and forcing audio output to 2.0 only.

My setup is:

  • Raspberry Pi connected with HDMI to a Panasonic Viera plasma TV.
  • From the TV digital audio is passed on via a optical Toslink cable to a Sonos Playbar.

The Sonos Playbar supports surround sound. So does my TV. So in theory I should be able to set Rasplex to Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver. However this is not working.

Why? It used to work before.

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# OpenELEC - The living room PC for everyone #
# ...... visit http://www.openelec.tv ...... #
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RasPlex (official) Version: RP-0.7.1
RasPlex git: b5fd0f434b7bf803ac4f26914ced9ec8c6717d7c
RasPlex:~ # tvservice -a
     PCM supported: Max channels: 2, Max samplerate:  48kHz, Max samplesize 16 bits.
2

See https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/181255/rasplex-guide-to-audio-settings for a audio settings guide.

Before RasPlex 0.6.0 the number of channels for PCM audio was always forced to only two channels, this is why it worked in earlier versions of RasPlex, for passthrough the AC-3/DTS stream channels was used.

In RasPlex 0.6.0 and newer the number of channels in settings actually affects PCM audio channels and should match what your setup supports, most TVs unfortunately only support stereo PCM passthrough and some support AC-3/DTS passthrough.

I would suggest you set channels to 2.0 and test the different capable receiver settings.

3

Ok. So if my TV only supports two channel pass through (that’s a pity…) I need to look in to something else.
I currently have a Sonos Playbar, with Subwoofer, and intend to add two satellites to it.
So I would probably be better of getting a HDMI switch with separate Audio out.

Any suggestions for a good HDMI switch box that can output 5.1 audio over a separate Toslink connection?

4

http://www.amazon.com/ViewHD-Extractor-Optical-Converter-VHD-H2HSAs/dp/B00KBHX072/ref=sr_1_sc_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1453539245&sr=1-3-spell&keywords=hdmi+spliteer+optical+toslinkamazon.com/ViewHD-Extractor-Optical-Converter-VHD-H2HSAs/dp/B00KBHX072/ref=sr_1_sc_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1453539245&sr=1-3-spell&keywords=hdmi+spliteer+optical+toslink