Audio delay across all media players for 4k content

Plex Media Server
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1

Server Version#: 4.156.0
Player Version#: Various

Hi folks, I’m running into a wall on this one and hoping for some next troubleshooting steps. Here’s my setup:

  • Plex 4.156.0 on Windows 11 (i7-6700 @ 3.4ghz, 24gb DDR5)
  • Synology NAS with SMBC file shares
  • Wired gigabit ethernet between all devices (except some clients outlined below)

I am getting an audio sync issue which seems to occur on all media, but it especially prevalent when playing 4k content, where it is a good half-second behind the video stream.

This is a fairly recent development, too. For clients, I have tested with:

  • Web UI (Chrome, Win 11)
  • Android TV app
  • Roku TV app

I have tried various transcoding settings, but focused on no transcoding and ensuring that the various bypass settings on my smart TVs was enabled so there was no processing delay. The stream itself has started becoming a bit of a buffering nightmare too, all of a sudden.

I’ve tried running various network speed tests in case there’s an issue between any of the devices (NAS > Plex > Client) and file transfer speeds are near the maximum of what my hardware and cables support.

I’ve attached logs and a screenshot of my dashboard as seen during testing (around 21:17 to 21:20 time frame in the logs). There was only a single stream, I had the dashboard open in a separate browser tab and it shows two sessions.

Thanks in advance, I’ve been bashing my head against the wall all week on this one!

Screenshot 2026-03-30 211813
Screenshot 2026-03-30 2118131421×1302 136 KB

Plex Media Server Logs_2026-03-30.zip (2.8 MB)

2

I’m going to go ahead and close this, though it’s not resolved. My current suspicion is this is a performance issue on the server I’m running, so I’m going to try and offboard the video encoding to a dedicated GPU. It’ll take me awhile to track down a reasonably priced, low profile card so for now it’s 1080p for me!