Can't Hear Dialogue On TV -- Plex For Android Not Downmixing To Stereo

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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I have what appears to been a common problem for a lot Android Plex users over the past few years. I have an off-brand Android TV box that has sound settings that don’t work perfectly. The TV box is hooked up to a generic non-smart TV through HDMI. When Plex (on the TV box) asks the box for sound capabilities, the box is not querying the EDID from the TV over hdmi. Instead, it is using a hard coded value that says that 5.1 PCM is supported even though the TV can only accept 2.0 PCM. The problem is not with the TV – I have checked.

This is a real problem when I play video files that has 5.1 AC3 in them. Since most of my video files are of the HEVC/AC3 variety, the box direct plays them, thanks to the AC3 decoder that plex provides with the Plex For Android – and I’m really happy about that – my other TV box (that also does not natively support AC3) connected to my AV receiver decodes the AC3 and sends perfect 5.1 PCM to my receiver over hdmi.

The problem is that my “not so perfect” android box is also sending 5.1 PCM to my non-smart TV because of the box’s hard-coded EDID problem. The TV then only plays the front left and front right channels and the dialog that is mostly on the centre channel cannot be heard. I’ve seen a lot of forum posts about this exact problem for many different devices.

The only solution that I’ve found is to select a lower quality level to force a transcode of both the video and the audio. Sometimes, many of the quality options are missing and I end having to choose 240p to hear the sound. Obviously this not what I want.

Plex, we really need a work around for this and your responses about this problem have been rather underwhelming. I know you blame the TV box. But the real world is what it is and your product should work in the real world. There are many Android TV boxes (and probably TVs and other devices) with this problem and Plex just doesn’t work properly on them.

These are some obvious fixes (in order of preference):

  1. A “Stero Sound Only” setting in Plex that overrides the 5.1 capability information that you get from the device. The file could still be direct played and your AC3 decoder would output 2.0 PCM to the TV like it does on other TV boxes do. This is the best option and, I think, a rather sensible one that would be easy to include in the Plex For Android settings (mobile and TV) - a simple on/off option.

  2. A “Transcode all multi-channel sound to stereo” option that does not also force a video transcode on the server.

  3. Let us force a transcode at any quality we choose. Currently, if we choose a quality bit rate higher than the video’s actual bitrate, you direct play and we can’t stop that.

Anyway, I’m tired of watching good quality videos at 240p so that I can hear the sound. Please make it possible to easily force stereo output from Plex For Android (especially from your AC3 decoder).

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I’m having this same problem while watching on a chrome book. When watching sports I can get the announcers on the stereo audio channel however there is no field noise. I can get all the other noise when switching to the 5.1 stream however I can’t hear the announcers. As mentioned above we need a solution to this please.

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@MovieWiz Can you update this with logs after reproducing the problem? I’d like to double check what your device is returning to the app.

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As I told you, I’ve been disrespected too often. I’m out. There are no settings on the box that will change the behaviour. There is a known problem with the firmware. We know that others have similar problems with the hardware. What we need is an easy way force stereo output. This is a fact. You don’t need logs for that.

Or Plex can just do what it always does and blame someone (such as me for not helping further) or something else and choose not to help its customers use their product.

Even if there was a config setting in a config file that we could change (ie., no user interface in the app), people would be to watch and hear their videos again.

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As I don’t expect users with this problem to get any help from Plex, I suggest that all users with “imperfect” android devices (phones, tablet, tv boxes, tvs) switch to Jellyfin. I’ve made the switch and the Android clients have an option in the main app settings to force a downmix to stereo. So your devices can become useful again – you’ll be able to hear the sound. You’ll also also avoid the frequent and absolutely atrocious buggy android app releases that we’ve been getting from plex.

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