All music currently plays back from the NVIDIA SHIELD TV PRO (2019) running PMS to my receiver via HDMI at 48khz, whether it’s 44.1khz or 192khz, and regardless of file type. This is consistent with all files. Not only that, but it’s always PCM (thank you mmedulan for your reply).
Issue was discovered during playback of 192khz 24bit FLAC files.
NOTE: Opening audio files using a file browser app and playing the file directly causes the file to play back in its original quality. App was X-PLORER, and Yamaha detects signal quality correctly at 192khz during playback.
Quality is confirmed on my Yamaha receiver by pressing options -> signal information
Server Version#: v1.18.0.1913
Plex App Version#: 7.26.0.14578
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That IS a related thread for sure. All my music plays back in PCM as well, even though I enabled pass through. Movies stream their respective DTS and Dolby tracks, but music is all PCM. Thank you for your response.
SUPER annoying. This is not a feature whatsoever.
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Exactly. It’s ridiculous. This worked for years and now it’s been broken for months and without any acknowledgement whatsoever…and for such a major bit of broken functionality.
I’m also having this same issue with 96khz/24bit 2ch and 6ch flac files. I originally had a Roku Premiere+ exhibiting the issue so I went out and bought an nVidia Shield TV yet I’m still experiencing the problem. I suspect a plex app specific issue, I’ll try to play around using other media player apps on each of these clients to confirm this weekend.
Besides the downsampling from 192khz to 48khz or 96khz to 48khz, I’m also experiencing multichannel FLAC files being downsampled to 2.0 stereo only.
Is anyone else observing this problem too with 5.1 tracks?
Client: Roku or nVidia Shield TV 2019 (plex app)
Server: Version 1.18.4.2171 (ubuntu linux)
Receiver: Onkyo TX-RZ830
Edit: Forgot to mention that in both cases 96k/24b/2ch or 96k/24b/6ch the plex dashboard shows “DIRECT PLAY” or “DIRECT PLAY 5.1”. So it doesn’t appear to be transcoding on the server side, but perhaps a problem with the plex client app on the roku/nvidia platforms?
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Yes this is precisely my issue. Not only do 96/88/192k files play at 48k but ALL 5.1 FLAC/DTS/AC3 plays as stereo (@48k of course). This worked for years. I would shuffle my collection and it would happily change formats with each track. It’s been borken for the better part of 2019 I think and now into 2020. And all without a sintgle acknowledgement from Plex team. How about a simple “yeah we tested on a Shield and yup you’re right” or “nope, works fine here.” By the numerous piles of complaints about the same exact problem here on their very forum, I find it utterly inconceivable that this is an isolated problem and that they are not aware of this situation. And yet…crickets. Stop marketing this as a music platform then. No hi-res playback. No multichannel playback. No MQA support for integrated Tidal. C’mon…
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How do we know its not a lower level shield tv os / hardware issue vs. a plex app issue? For example on my Roku, I tried using the native roku media player app and had the same problem with stereo 48khz. I’m curious how we think it was working previously with plex, was plex somehow triggering a passthrough mode?
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It could definitely be a lower level problem, but that’s why we need the Plex team to join the discussion here to find out what is happening. Very disturbing though that Roku has the same problems in your tests. These seems to suggest even stronger that this is a Plex problem.
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Did you read the link I provided? The plex team has acknowledged that this is the state of the player, and will not be fixed.
You can get around it slightly by creating .mkv containers around the files, and playing them as video.
Here is the quoted post:
Solved by elan in post #2
It’s by design that we decode the audio instead of trying to pass it through; among other reasons, with the new advanced audio player, we do: Loudness leveling Sweet fades (overlap/mixed tracks) Soft pause/resumes Gapless Voice boost and silence compression on Podcasts For those applications, hav…
Is there a reason why that couldn’t be an option? Decode in the player vs. pass-through untouched? Was there a link you were trying to post to a previous thread? Instead it looks like you posted a zip file. I’m assuming this is true for the plex audio player on Roku platform too, this is a plex player issue not an nvidia specific issue correct?
edit: sorry saw the link up top now…
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This is so completely idiotic as to hardly be believable. So Plex completely F’d up the entire music experience and didn’t bother to notify their paying subscribers (of which I will no longer be one). This worked just fine for years and was one of the reasons I bought a Shield+Plex. So they F’d up music entirely for fades and podcasts? What a joke. It’s clear to me the people running the show have no freaking idea what they’re doing. If I sound pissed off it’s because I am. I’ve invested years in this platform and now it’s basically useless to me. I’ve been complaining about this and literally begging for some kind of response from Plex team only to be met with silence for many many months. I guess being a paid subscriber that forks over a yearly fee means nothing. I’ll make sure to warn others of this regurly on all of Plex social media outlets (especially those espousing it as an audiophile music platform), less others be duped by this short-sighted idiocy.
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“advanced audio player”??? “Advanced” in that it can’t play hi-res or multichannel audio? Sounds like a primitive audio player to me.
I can understand your frustration, especially since it used to work and now it doesn’t. I guess to look on the bright side, at least its not a technical limitation from the streaming client device platforms (roku, nvidia, etc), its an intentional choice that the plex client app team made…
Maybe that makes it even worse in your mind, but to try to be positive, if we can convince them thru a feature request that this is an important / valuable / vital feature for those interested in hires audio, perhaps they will add it back again? Or give the option to switch between cross-fade continuous etc bs processing vs. true high quality transfer to the receivers.
Lets poke around and see if we can find a feature request forum. The other path would be this plexamp approach, which is not available on our platforms right now, but we could also request they enable that app on nvidia/roku as a means to resolving this issue too.
I must admit though, it is mind boggling to think that folks like us wouldn’t want this feature. The entire plex platform isn’t targeted at your typical millennial or media consumer. Its for the tech geek / videophile / audiophile, and they’ve gone to great lengths to support HDR10, DTS-HD, TrueHD, ATMOS passthrough on video playback for their audience. Therefore, it is shocking and inconsistent with their mission statement that hires audio passthrough is not supported.
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Completely agree with you. And yeah I don’t normally lash out as I’m quite sensitive and sympathetic to what technology companies face. But this is kind of beyond the pale and I’m just mind-boggled at this. Glad to join in a campaign to try to work proactively for Plex team to see reason and give some support to the notion that WE are the customer, as much or more than some mythical millennial user base they are chasing at the expense of those who pay for yearly subscriptions year after year - and not so they can run a pirate server, but to simply enjoy their digital music collection. I’d like to be positive and helpful if there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. BTW: Does anyone recall getting an email or any other communication about this rather significant change (read: downgrade) in the Plex player last year? Also, I’d pay double or triple what Plex costs for a working solution (i.e. hi-res and multichannel audio playback on Shield).
Qobuz plays at full 192k on Shield flawlessly. Roon plays at 96kHz at least, and integrates Quobuz (and Tidal). Having a real hard time trying to find any reason whatsoever to keep paying for Plex (or Tidal for that matter).
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I’m trying to find apps that can stream from my local NAS (not online subscription services). I tried MXplayer and it at least played multichannel 5.1 flac (altho it still downsampled to 48khz from 96khz source files). I’m not familiar with the others you referenced but I’ll look into them.
I know it’s not a Shield or Android problem because the files play at their 192khz sample rate when played via a file browser.
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No support for audio over 48khz and no 5.1 ch audio support? Who’s idea was it to take this away?? Forget tidal, give back full audio quality for OUR content. After all, it’s OUR servers. Very annoying!
For music, so far my impression is that the native plex apps are junk. For remote music play I need to use Yatse. Native app is bombs away in the car (which can be dangerous lol).
plexamp is fine at home, you get the sweet fades etc. but at the cost of hi-res files being downsampled even while hardwired to a NAS. (I understand this is alpha-ware and long in the tooth).
the only thing I’ve tried which seems to pass through the content unmolested is the PlexKodiConnect addon for kodi.
I too am disappointed, as a paying subscriber, to have lost the ability to stream anything better than 48Khz from my Plex server. I feel Plex handles all the other parts of the music library in an excellent manner. I’ll be looking around to find a way, apart from Plex, to play my lossless library on my server through the Nvidia Shield. Will report back if I find a good solution.
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