I purchased a NVDA Shield Pro for my man cave because I have high end preprocessor, amps, and speakers.
All my other TVs have FireTV devices. My preference would be to have a consistent UI, so I have beenn looking at FireTV Cube gen3.
I have read on the web that Cody passes thru TrueHD and DTS audio, but the Plex app does not. But things change all the time, and old posts from 2022 might not reflect reality.
Does anyone know if the latest Plex app for FireTV supports pass thru of TrueHD audio?
Yes, I can confirm that it works perfectly TrueHD and DTS passthrough and Dolby Vision in Plex for Fire TV Cube 3, but you must have updated Fire Cube 3 to the latest version (7.6.5.2) for it to work.
In fact, i have retired my Shield TV Pro for the Cube 3 as it has Alexa built in with its own speaker and i use it with home assistant every day.
So now I am wondering if the NVDA Shield could take over the Plex Server duties for my home. (Typically 1 app, max 2 apps streaming from the server concurrently.)
I think the issue would be the external USB drive throughput…
I, otherwise, cannot confirm this. I still have troubles with DTS HD MA 7.1 audio tracks which didn’t change with 7.6.5.2 and the newest Android App/ FireTV App Beta Release .
DTS (HD MA) 5.1 isn’t a problem, but DTS HD MA 7.1 is.
EDIT: I assume, you don’t have HDMI Passthrough enabled, which would explain that.
The soundbar shows DTS and Atmos, not PCM, so the passthrough is active, both in the plex App under audio, and in fire cube “best option” under audio settings.
You can see the pictures that it does not transcode anything and does not trigger PCM in the soundbar. (990C samsumg)
If you say so, I believe you, but it’s still strange. I’m clueless what I could try…
My TV is a old 2017 Samsung, which still supports decoding (or passthrough) of DTS(HD MA). The native App for Samsungs Operating System is capable to play DTS 5.1 and also up to DTS HD MA 7.1. But is limited to PCM 2.0, instead of 5.1 or 7.1 and isn’t capable of Dolby True HD/Atmos.
My Soundbar and Subwoofer (2.1) are from the German audio specialist “Teufel” and has a native DTS and Dolby Digital Decoder, but not for DTS HD. BUT: DTS HD is backward compatible to lossy DTS (Core) and it is working with DTS HD 5.1, but not with 7.1 although it should possible. With Kodi on Fire TV Cube 3rd Gen. with the GitHub AddOn Plex Kodi Connect, it is actually working, but I love the frontend of the Plex App, it’s way more comfortable and I want to get rid off Kodi/PKC as soon as possible.
Correct. Direct Play / Direct Stream / Transcode is what happens with Plex Media Server. The Plex client can alter the audio or video and the server will never be aware of what is happening.
The Cube v3 does what you describe.
Other FireTV devices convert DTS to another format, then pass it to the attached device.
For example, I’ve a Fire TV Stick 4K connected to an HDMI input on my Denon receiver. The Stick audio is set to “best available.” The Plex app is set to HDMI passthrough.
When playing any DTS audio format, the FireTV Stick converts DTS to Dolby Digital Plus 5.1. Plex Media Server reports Direct Play, as it is unaware of the conversion.
Just wanted to clear up some disinformation out there based on my own testing and the latest update.
With the latest Kodi nightly bitstreaming all HD audio formats on the Gen 3 cube works great.
Sadly the same is not true outside of Kodi, I’ve tested various players that use forks of exoplayer and DTS is completely broken. Often it will either only play the core or it will try to play HD and the audio and video will freeze up. In some cases libvlc will work with DTS, DTS: X works fine but DTS-HD has a huge delay.
The implementation of TrueHD is also hit or miss outside Kodi unless you use a player with libvlc, not including VLC itself ironically. A lot of players are converting True HD to multi channel PCM.
But in Kodi everything is perfect, all DTS and Dolby Formats work including HD Atmos.
This completely dismisses the various comments online mentioning the Cube Gen 3 only supports the core DTS track.
Certainly there’s some work to do by app developers still using libvlc and especially exoplayer but at least there’s a working method now.
I also tested it with Kodi and all audio formats work, regardless of whether it is DTS 5.1,DTS HD and Atmos.
The new Kodi Beta Build correct the Audio Delay too.
Framerateswitching and HDR10 + works perfekt
Now i can Sell my SHIELD TV
Plex should correct the problem.
