HE-AAC 5.1 with direct play set to auto doesn't play sound on ROKU

Plex Players Streaming Devices
21

Well, thanks for your insight and help to get this fixed, appreciated! Is there a toggle at the server end to force this to produce stereo for now or must all devices be altered?

22

There is no global audio setting in the Roku app to force it (from what I can see)

Perhaps the dev will have some more info when he pops in

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23

Sorry I meant on the PLEX server, I could not see one there either to force stereo.

24

The only thing you could possibly do is a forced override profile of the Roku.
It would force transcode any non-compliant audio to the two-channel limit imposed.

Is that a viable option?

25

No, I tried to force it to play only stereo and it didn’t work. The center track was still missing unfortunately.

26

you tried to write a profile and put it in the Profiles directory (which you had to create manually) ?

You can’t edit the default and make it work.

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27

Ummm, no, I went into the ROKU menu and toggled its audio options to play everything in stereo.
I would really be up to learning to do a profile but I have never attempted nor know where to start. Despite my “avatar” I am no slacker and I think a fast learner and would welcome the assistance!

28

Pretty straight forward to do but might take some fussing around (requires server restart each time a change is made) to get finalized.

  1. mkdir “/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Profiles” <-- “Profiles” does not exist by default.
  2. Change ownership to plex:plex
  3. Create an XML profile, using the one from /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/Profiles as your starting template.
  4. Place new XML ‘profile’ (same exact device name) in “Profiles” directory
  5. Restart PMS.
  <DirectPlayProfiles>
    <VideoProfile container="mp4,mkv" codec="h264,mpeg4" audioCodec="aac,mp3,flac" />
    <MusicProfile container="mp4" codec="aac" />
    <MusicProfile container="mp3" codec="mp3" />
    <PhotoProfile container="jpeg,gif,png" />
  </DirectPlayProfiles>
  <CodecProfiles>
    <VideoCodec name="h264">
      <Limitations>
        <UpperBound name="video.width" value="1920" isRequired="true" />
        <UpperBound name="video.height" value="1080" isRequired="true" />
        <UpperBound name="video.refFrames" value="8" />
        <UpperBound name="video.bitDepth" value="8" />
      </Limitations>
    </VideoCodec>
    <VideoAudioCodec name="aac,mp3,mp2,pcm,flac,alac">
      <Limitations>
        <UpperBound name="audio.channels" value="2" />
        <LowerBound name="audio.samplingRate" value="22050" />
      </Limitations>
    </VideoAudioCodec>
    <VideoAudioCodec name="ac3">
      <Limitations>
        <LowerBound name="audio.channels" value="2" />
      </Limitations>

Look here.

There is audio.channels Lower bound.
If you specify<UpperBound name="audio.channels" value="2" />
and place it in the <VideoCodec name="h264"> structure, that should do it.

Notice how it exists for music files. You want to copy that limitation over for video files as the test.

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29

Thanks, I will give it a try!

30

Be patient and don’t forget to restart (frustrating to forget)

1 Like
31

Will do.

32

Hi All. It seems there may be a Roku firmware regression in 9.4, not down mixing 5.1 AAC to 2ch AAC. We’ll file a report with Roku, but in the mean time we’ll need handle this by converting the 5.1 AAC to 2ch AAC when applicable. We already do this when we detect surround sound and convert to 5.1 AC3, however, we’ll need to do this when we have to output 2ch instead of relying on the Roku to down mix it.

2 Likes
33

Thank you.

34

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