I’m currently using a 4.0 setup due to being in an apartment with paper thin walls (no center, no sub).
I’ve configured my device (Pioneer receiver) in Windows to 4.0 with full-range front channels only and enabled the Channel Phantoming enhancement. Seems to be working pretty well but I was wondering if Plex could do it better on its own.
Edit: 5.1 selected in Plex.
However, there’s only 4 options in Plex:
Auto Select Channels
Stereo
5.1
7.1
How should Plex be configured in order to handle this information and mix the missing channel properly?
Your audio device downmixes from 5.1 to 4.0 - ideally taking Plex out of something it doesn’t have a selection for, and in PMP can’t you pass that audio to the device to handle?
and now that you’ve tried that what happens if you select 5.1 in the app and what does that sound like? There may not be any difference. or there may be a lot.
In Plex, those settings are for non bitstream codecs such as PCM/LPCM, AAC, MP3 and OPUS. I would just leave that to Auto select channels and Windows Settings to 7.1. This will send those particular codecs out as is to your receiver. Let your AV receiver handle the matrixing and output. PMP will not do a better job. In regards to bitstream audio codecs like Dolby Digital and better, make sure exclusive mode is checked and all the codecs are selected for passthrough. These two settings are the only ones that matters for those codecs.
You can usually simply unplug/omit the subwoofer. The signal on the .1 channel is usually just an addition to the regular bass in the other channels.
What your receiver then produces out of it, is a different matter. It might apply a different mix, which takes into account the size of your speakers and their distance etc.
