Cannot play 5.1 sound on laptop only

Plex Players Desktop Players
, ,
1

Server Version#:1.42.2.10156
Player Version#:Plex HTPC 1.71.1.346-f62ce923

I can play 5.1 sound perfectly fine on my other devices but I recently tried it on my laptop and only stereo sound plays, however, 5.1 plays fine via other players like VLC, this is specifically a plex problem.

It works fine in the web browser at times, it seems to sometimes detect a transcode:

Screenshot 2025-11-14 105005
Screenshot 2025-11-14 105005811×471 40.7 KB

but it is always broke in the plex HTPC. This does happen on other devices but normally selecting the audio device and configuring it manually works, but this time it isn’t.

Screenshot 2025-11-14 104155
Screenshot 2025-11-14 1041551920×790 70.8 KB

I also know it isn’t hardware since I have a HDMI monitor with built in sound and it doesn’t work there either.

All devices seem to use direct play as well.

I am at a bit of a loss as to why only Plex HTPC cannot seem to play 5.1. Any ideas?

2

In your screenshot, “Audio Channels” is set to stereo.

3

Yes, sorry, my speakers are stereo only

4

Then how are you expecting to get surround sound?

5

Via transcode down to 2.0

6

So what are you reporting here, precisely?
Do you not hear anything at all, if you select a 5.1 audio stream?

7

I do not hear anything on 5.1.

On web browser I do since as shown in my update it transcodes to 2.0.

However, I also noticed that HE-AAC Stereo sound does not work for me in web browser which is why some of my videos do not work without selecting 5.1 again

8

Try setting the audio device type to “Optical”.

There is also curently a bug in the transcoder refresh branch. You may need to get back to a server version before 1.43.x

9

I am also noticing that during transcode the video is skipping and it isn’t in the source material, like if I play via windows media player the frames are there but in plex web it is skipping entire seconds

10

Ah I see, I might try downgrading thanks

11

Ah though my server is 1.42 so should be immune

12

Did you install the E-AC3 codec on the Windows laptop?
Either this: EAC3 audio not working in windows 11 (fix provided)
or this: [BUG] Problem with (E-)AC3 Codec and Windows update 24H2 - #77 by harisled

It can’t hurt to have Releases · Nevcairiel/LAVFilters · GitHub on this machine as well.

13

Thanks, they still didn’t work but I think I got it.

When installed all these codecs I noticed that Plex then wouldn’t actually play any videos without my fast forwarding first, almost like it was getting an error or something I couldn’t see.

So, I uninstalled, cleared cache that was in my user profile folder, and reinstalled and it seems to work now.

Now I think about it, when I first played one of these videos it complained of not having codecs but then when I played it again it worked but without sound.

I wonder if Plex just never bothered to tell me again that codecs were missing.