Downmixing to stereo in Plex for Windows

Plex Players Desktop Players
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Server Version#: 1.40.3.8555
Player Version#: 1.95.2.166-92c7babe

I’m watching content that has an audio track that’s DTS-HD MA 5.1
I’m watching this content on a Windows 11 machine that has two speakers, and where the default audio output device in Windows is configured as 2.0 (left and right channels, no special headphone surround sound stuff enabled). There are also no overrides for the Plex app in the Windows volume mixer (it’s using the system default audio output device).

My problem is that Plex server isn’t transcoding the 5.1 audio to stereo for this client, it’s direct playing, and so because dialogue is mostly in the center channel the balance is all screwed up. I’ve configured the client player audio settings to specify that it should use the device that’s configured in windows to be the default audio output device, and set that device manually to 2.0 in Plex with what I assume is the correct (basic) device kind (this isn’t clear to me as the device is a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 USB audio interface, so not HDMI, optical, or 3.5mm outs), but none of that makes a difference either.

My expectation with this configuration is that the server should be transcoding audio down to two channels and sending that to the client. That’s not happening though. Can someone confirm my expectation of where in the pipeline this should be getting downmixed is correct (i.e. that the client shouldn’t be the one doing the audio downmixing here)? I ask in part because I see there’s a Normalize Multi-channel Audio checkbox that also hasn’t seemed to help with the issue, but it’s a client-side setting where I’m clearly expecting this work to happen server-side (and that’s where I’d like to force it for this client if possible).

Any idea how I can force 2.0 audio on this client, or how I can verify where in the chain 5.1 is getting downmixed to 2.0?

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Try selecting the audio interface by its device name. Do not use “Automatically selected”.
If you have set “Audio device kind” to “basic” and the number of channels to 2.0, then you did everything right.
Under these circumstances the player should be down mixing surround sound to stereo.
(It doesn’t have to happen on the server, the desktop player is able to do that on its own.)

Have you ever manipulated the mpv.conf file?
(If you don’t know what that is, you probably have not.)

Anyway, start the player software, then play an affected video for ~1 minute.
Then fetch the player log.
Bonus points for fetching the Plex Media Server.log immediately after that.
Zip them up and drag them into the message editor of this forum.

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