Considering I started this thread on June 17th, and nothing has changed for the better, there’s little reason to hope for a solution anytime soon.
I understand nobody tests Airplay playback at Plex, but I would think someone during a 3 month long beta testing period would try it and file a bug report. It does seem like Apple messed up here: I found a couple of other apps which don’t produce any sound either. Infuse works, though, and so do files using the native AVPlayer instead of mpv on Plex. So I guess turning on the “Use Old Video Player” option is the best (and only) option for those on tvOS 17 for now.
Yeah I understand that.
But during the recent Fireside thread pretty much all the ongoing issues on Apple devices such as LipSync, Stutter, Lack of Spatial MultiChannel with AirPods and of course audio dropouts with HomePods have at least been acknowledged.
Was the fireside thread just a PR stunt? Time will tell.
But for me the clock is ticking. In my case it’s a 3 month clock.
After that I test out the Swiftfin player in Jellyfin or just use Infuse natively. Either way in 3 months time if nothing has changed then Plex gets uninstalled.
I have to say, I’ve been perfectly happy using the old engine with +275ms delay on tvOS 16.
The regression on tvOS 17 is absolutely Apple’s fault, by the way. Airplay 1 receivers don’t work at all, even on Infuse and with the native player, while working perfectly fine on iOS 17 devices. I guess AirPlay is a niche use case, but it shouldn’t be so niche that nobody at Apple has managed to notice and fix this issue in 3+ months since the first beta was released. Unbelievable.
For me less so as I also have AirPods so no Spatial Audio with the old player.
Just an update, I am trying to wrap up some time sensitive tasks first, before looking into your logs as I will be OOO soon for a few weeks. My hope is still to investigate and document this issue in detail for our engineering team, before I am OOO.
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I missed this first time round…but I’m actually surprised at this and I guess we may have slightly different issues even if they may display the same symptoms.
I have an Apple TV 4K (2022) running tvOS 16
I have the identical device running tvOS 17.
Using a pair of HomePods 2nd Gen….
Audio never cuts out in Infuse on either device.
Audio never cuts out in Plex using the old audio player on either device.
Audio is 100% guaranteed to cut out within 3minutes in Plex with the new audio player on both OS versions.
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Absolutely no problem Chris.
Any kind of of update before you’re OOO (I’m assuming that means “Out of Office?”) really would be appreciated, even if the update is that you didn’t get chance to look at the logs. I appreciate we all have real world lives.
So, no difference between tvOS 16 and 17? For me, tvOS 17 is a huge regression on Apple TV 4K 1st gen (2017) using a stereo pair of Sonos One speakers:
Plex (new engine): works, sound drops out, same as on 16
Plex (old engine): no sound at all, worked fine on 16
Infuse, Apple TV+, YouTube: works, same as on 16
VLC, MrMC: no sound, worked fine on 16
AirPlay 1 receiver (Shairport4w, AirSpeaker) from any app: no sound, worked fine on 16
Right I got ya .
I don’t have an older Apple TV to test sadly, but I guess that’s why I have never had the “No audio” issue. So without a device to test I happily concede that this could be an Apple issue.
It seems we see the same on this and this is definitely on Plex and it’s new audio engine.
I got the same error and managed to reproduce it reliably on the latest Plex client on tvOS 17, where the “old player engine” workaround doesn’t work at all. Got the full logs of the session (both on the Apple TV client and the Mac server side). Where should I send them?
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Please DM me here on the forums
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Thanks. DM sent.
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So in an effort to reproduce this I realised my LG SP11RA Soundbar supports AirPlay. Sure enough I was able to reproduce the audio drop out issue today after a minute or two. What I noticed is the audio dropped out for a split second a few times before going away completely. I have gathered my own logs and will update our internal issue with my findings later tonight.
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It’ s literally what I wrote in the first post 3 months ago:
Now the problem is much worse with tvOS 17: AirPlay doesn’t work at all with the old audio engine, so Plex is not usable with AirPlay.
That’s great to hear Chris! Glad to hear you were able to reproduce it. This is an issue I’ve been experiencing for almost a year, but haven’t written on the forums about it until now. Please keep us updated.
Great that you managed to reproduce the dropouts and what you are getting seems to match with a reply I made elsewhere in that it’s reportedly a newer (tvOS 17 stable) issue and not solely happening with Plex. (I’m concluding this purely on the manner and frequency of the dropouts you mention above.)
Initially though when we first starting to report this there were no intermittent dropouts in Plex. Just perfect sound for 2-3 mins then guaranteed silence.
Hopefully though the two issues are in some way linked and everything gets resolved.
Both of my Apple TV 4k’s are running tvOS 16.6. These audio issues are only happening with Plex. At no time using any other app has there been any audio issues.
Not saying there isn’t some issue with tvOS 17, just that there is a specific Plex audio issue here that needs to be fixed.
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Absolutely.
I already said as much in this post.
I’m just adding on that there is now another issue specifically related to tvOS 17 that gives similar but not identical symptoms. This one is not related to Plex as neither guy who reported it on Reddit use Plex.
It’s just gonna make finding the root cause of the pre-existing issue even more difficult to track down.
That’s not quite correct. A quote from the very first post in this thread:
Here’s the chronology:
In June Plex introduces the new audio engine that finally supports Airplay 2 (their old one only supported Airplay 1). Unfortunately, it’s very unstable (sound drops out several times, then goes away completely).
At the same time, they add the manual sync adjustment feature, which serves as a “good enough” workaround for Airplay users who can’t use the new engine because of its bugginess.
On Monday tvOS 17 is released, which seems to completely disable all Airplay 1 functionality at least on SOME Apple TV models (in this thread, it seems to affect me and javicuna). That means that all apps without Airplay 2 support can’t play sound. At all. Those apps include VLC Media Player, the defunct MrMC app, and Plex (with the old audio engine enabled). This is completely Apple’s fault. I hope they reintroduce this functionality in a future update (meaning, it’s just a bug/oversight and not intentional).
But for now, the workaround with the old engine doesn’t work anymore (Apple’s bug), the new engine is still unusable after 3 months (Plex’s bug), so Plex is essentially not supporting Airplay on Apple TV at all in any useful way (that includes music too, by the way). So, until either Apple or Plex fix their bugs, Infuse seems to be the only working app that supports Airplay sound output for Plex media on tvOS (iOS 17 is not affected and still works with all Airplay 1 apps and receivers).
Edit: after further testing, it seems like AirPlay 1 does work on tvOS 17 if my Apple TV is connected via Wi-Fi, and stops working when connected with an Ethernet cable! I’ve always used a wired connection with Apple TV until now, I guess I’ll use Wi-Fi until this gets fixed by Apple. What a weird bug!
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This still isn’t fixed? It’s a deal-breaker. Been so frustrated the past few months with my similar setup having similar issues.
Gotta cancel my plex pass until this is fixed since it breaks the only way I use Plex…
