So i was having an issue where all my AAC 5.1 videos were down coding to stereo. I made many attempts over a couple months researching the issue never quite finding an resolution until today when i stumbled onto this old thread.
Reading through it a roku person asked about forced direct play, i knew i had it on (not sure why) and suggested it had to be off. So i turned it off an BLAMO my 5.1AAC was now playing correctly as DD+!!
So im wondering why a seemingly advantageous setting of making sure theres no transcoding causes this audio issue?
I have a very beefy htpc as my media server and feel like it should never ever transcode. I may have seen it transcoding and turned on forced direct play so video was always perfect.
“Force Direct Play” tells Plex Media Server to send the media as-is to the client, irrespective of the client’s capabilities.
If the device to which the client is attached (or something else in the audio chain) does not support AAC 5.1, then the client (or other devices) may downmix it to 2.0.
The downmix happens outside of Plex (by the Roku itself), so Plex is unaware of what is happening.
Once you turned off Force Direct Play, the normal handshaking between PMS, the Plex app, the client device itself, and other devices occurs and the audio is converted to DD+.
annnd eureka when i see stream info stating partial transcode audio stream incompatible it means its direct playing video but transcoding audio. So its the roku device that cant or wont play aac 5.1? if so thats a huge hit and miss from roku!
