Server Version#: 1.16.6.1592, running in Windows 10
Player Version#: latest available on Roku OS as of 12/27/2019
I’m not sure if this is a Roku or Plex issue… Pure Bitstream Audio Passthrough of Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD MA used to work with Plex app running on Roku 3. I recently noticed that everything is transcoded to DD+ or falls back to the core (DTS in the case of DTS HD). I verified that Roku itself doesn’t have settings for pure passthrough, although I’m not sure it ever did… In the Plex app on Roku, when viewing the “stream info” for a given show or movie, shows me that the content has Dolby TrueHd or DTS MA, but then says “convert” next to it, which seems to suggest that Plex app thinks it must convert the content.
I’m connected directly from Roku Ultra -> Yamaha Aventage A2080, which of course supports all advanced Audio formats, as all AVRs have for many years now. I also have a Roku 3 -> Pioneer Elite SC63. Both behave the same way.
I am open to suggestions are there any settings I might be missing in the Plex app or the Roku itself. I am certain this used to work with Plex on Roku…
I think you are mistaken, truehd has never passed through on roku.
it never has.
the only mainstream device to support truehd is nvidia shield, and has been for a long time, and probably will be the only one for the foreseeable future.
Thanks for the reply. Interesting… I wish I could go back and test with an older release, but alas I have no way to do so. I am positive I have seen DTSHD MA come through. Dolby TrueHd I can’t say for sure… But they are the same bandwidth and protocol on HDMI, so I was supposing that if one worked they both worked. But even DTS HD MA no longer works (falls back to the DTS core). I recall Roku having options for PCM / Bitstream, and nothing more (no transcoding capability until recently). The DDP transcodw which is there now indicates that Dolby MS12 is now present on the boxes. They were likely historically running Dolby MS11 only, hence the passthrough support sneaking through. I’ll see if I can get any more data points to help assess how/where this ever worked.
Cool chart, but it’s kind of hard to say from that chart alone. The chart shows “Dolby Audio™ and DTS pass through via HDMI®” (nothing about transcode). “Dolby Audio” to me means any Dolby codec that the AVR supports. The language is totally ambiguous about DTS however haha.
I submitted a ticket to Roku as well. We’ll see what they have to say. They should make it app dependent, in my opinion. I’m pretty sure that’s how it used to work, so that’s why I’m wondering if Plex is now artificially limiting this. It is a pretty basic feature in my opinion…
I have some more information, although nothing from Roku yet…
The HDR/4k quality running Plex on the Roku (even with running at 4k HDR 60Hz) wasn’t even close to running Plex natively on the LG C9 OLED TV, so I am changing course… I will return the Roku and punt on that for now. The apps (Plex, Netflix, Prime) work well from the TV directly, HOWEVER, I’m still stuck with SD audio, which is frustrating. eARC is of course requried to get get high bitrate audio back to the AVR.
My AVR is a Yamaha RX-A2080. Although eARC is on the feature sheet for the AVR, the fine print reveals that it will be released in some future FW update. Hasn’t happened yet. The LG OLED claims to support it, and option to enable disable eARC is present in the settings, but without an AVR that can do it, I won’t really know what Plex on the LG TV can do until Yamaha adds eARC.
So I guess the bottom line is that Roku is falling behind with their features and their HDR video quality. The lack of Dolby Vision on the current Roku lines is also a real head scratcher. I do up they get things together for future products. I understand that most of their customers are purchasing low end products, but for those of use that want a higher caliber product, they should have an option.
Disclaimer: The movie I’m addressing in this post is The Dark Knight Rises and I own it on blu-ray,.
In any case, I have both the Roku Streaming+ 4k stick and a Fire Tv 4K stick. With my blu-ray collection, I’ve ripped the Dark Knight Rises, copying the audio and ripping it in the DTS-HD, removed HD, and the stereo track as well…
The Plex player app on the Fire TV has an option to use Optical pass-through which is what I need to do. The Fire TV and Roku are connected to separate HDMI ports on my TV which has an optical out port. That optical out is then connected to my Dolby Digital DTS converter which feeds into my 5.1 surround sound system. It doesn’t have HDMI input nor output.
On the Plex Media player for the Fire TV, I get 5.1 surround using either the DTS-HD track or the normal DTS-nonHD track as well as the stereo track.
On the Plex media player for the Roku, I can only get the Stereo track to work. Both DTS (HD and non-HD) have no sound what-so-ever.
I’ve set the Plex Players on both streaming devices to do pass-through. From what I read, DTS-HD cannot really be passed-through? So it appears that the Plex Player app on the Fire TV stick is transcoding it into regular non-HD DTS or am I mistaken?
Just curious as this might be why the OP is having issues with DTS possibly?
Again, my set up is different where the streaming devices are connected to the TV and then I connect the optical out port of the TV to the optical in port of my Digital decoder.
I happened to notice a new option in the Plex audio settings to allow DTS-HD. When enabled my AV Receiver recognizes the audio as DTS and Tautulli shows the Roku as direct playing a DTS-HD MA audio stream.
Was there an update or something of the sort? @mpeteritas can you check on your end? as we have similar branded AV receivers
BTW: Still no luck with TrueHD support, I believe the only device that supports this atm is the Nvidia shield or a HTPC.
The setting to which I referred has some fine print to it. Apparent it extracts the DTS core from the DTS-HD track and sends that to the AV Receiver. It explains why the AV Receiver only displayed DTS and not DTS-HD MA.
Just to give some background
Technically-speaking, DTS-HD Master Audio carries within its file, two data streams: the original DTS “core” stream and another stream that contains the “residual” data that is made up of what’s left from the original signal and the lossy compressed stream. The decoder is then able to use both to recreate an audio stream that is bit-for-bit identical to the original (i.e. “lossless”). The encoding process is also very quick, and can be done in a single pass—something that is very important in the area of content creation and mastering.
This is quite interesting, I look forward to the implementation.
Ultimately I think I’ll get an Nvidia Shield Pro when stocks are back up. In addition to support for lossless audio formats the AI upscaler looks really promising.
