I’m confused about the audio transcoding behavior that happens on the client-side with a Google TV Streamer 4K.
My setup:
Server is direct playing a movie with a DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio track.
Client is a Google TV Streamer 4K, which does not support DTS-HD MA.
With the client-side “Audio Passthrough” option set to HDMI, my AVR receives a DTS signal. My understanding is that this is the “lossy core” of the DTS-HD MA audio track.
With passthrough disabled, my AVR receives a PCM 5.1 signal.
When passthrough is disabled, I am not sure if the Plex client or Android is doing the decoding to PCM, and I am not sure if the input to the decoding is the full DTS-HD MA track or the lossy DTS track.
How can I determine who is doing the decoding and what the source is?
Anyone know the answer here? Does the Plex client on Android TV perform any decoding to PCM?
Anyone able to say how this works? I assume that Plex has not paid for the licenses to decode the lossless audio track, but it’s confusing since the server says that is what is being played.
Anyone? Is there a better way to get a question answered by a Plex developer instead of posting here?
No.
The clients are meant to be as thin and light as possible. Yes the client decodes the stream but it is the server that is either passing or transcoding the audio into a format that the streamer can understand.
Your answer is to bring up the Dashboard on app.plex.tv and look at the Now Playing.
“Yes the client decodes the stream” - what do you mean by this?
When the Audio Passthrough option in the client is disabled, is the Plex client doing the decoding from the codec that the server is passing into PCM, or is that decoding handled by the underlying OS?
When configured for passthrough = HDMI, the Google TV streamer is passing the lossy DTS core (as displayed by the AVR).
When converting to PCM it is most likely converting the lossy DTS core (as the device does not support DTS-HD audio).
Additional info:
The Plex Dashboard displays what is happening on the Plex server. It does not display information about the Plex client.
If the Dashboard shows the audio is direct playing or direct streaming, then Plex Media Server is sending the full DTS-HD MA stream to the client (not the DTS core).
On Android devices, Plex uses the Exoplayer media player, part of the Android OS. Exoplayer performs the passthrough, conversion to PCM, etc. functions.
Which audio formats can be passed unchanged or which are transformed by the client depends on the client capabilities and licensing by the client manufacturer.
Example: Nvidia Shield Pro & onn 4K Pro, both running Android TV
The Shield can passthrough TrueHD + Atmos, DTS-HD MA, and DTS:X audio formats.
The onn 4K Pro supports none of those formats. For DTS-HD MA & DTS:X, it passes the lossy DTS core. TrueHD is transcoded by Plex Media Server to Dolby Digital Plus and Atmos info is lost in the process.
