Hiya, I’ve recently finished ripping my collection of nearly 1,000 blu-rays to a Plex server and I’m trying to wrap my head around the audio side of it now before I upgrade my setup. I’ve never had anything better than stock TV speakers or a dinky 50 dollar soundbar, and I have no idea what I should be looking for to get the best experience with Plex.
Since I’ve ripped all of my movies losslessly, most of them only come with a 5.1 track, so the main thing I’m wondering is if I buy a Sonos Playbar and watch the movies in 2.1, will I have trouble hearing anything? I’ve currently only tested on my PC (using headphones or my Bose Companion 5s), and there have been a handful of movies where I feel like the dialogue is getting completely drowned out. ‘Spider-Man Homecoming’ and ‘The Babadook’ were two examples where I thought that I might not be hearing the dialogue well due to not having a center channel (I don’t know if that’s even a thing). I’ve used both the desktop app and the web browser versions of plex, which doesn’t seem to make a difference.
I guess what I’m wondering is, does plex convert audio automatically? Can it transcode 5.1 to a 2.1 system? If not, does that mean I need to manually encode a stereo track for each of my rips in handbrake? Or is there another piece of hardware that I should be looking at, like a receiver?
All Plex lcients can downconvert 5.1 to 2.0 if they know that they must do it.
And herein lies the catch: some clients get the info how many audio channels are available from the TV.
And if the TV is lying, then the downmix is not done and you’ll hear only 2 channels out of 6
And the center channel (where 80% of the dialog is put in) is missing.
So to give you some tips, we’d need to know how you are watching your movies.
What are you using as a screen?
What is the player (the Plex ‘client’)?
Do you have some sort of audio system or are you only considering buying one?
So the TV is a sony xbr55x850b. As far as plex client, I typically use my Roku 4 but also have the option of using my PS4 or Xbox One (although from what I understand the Roku 4 is supposed to be one of the best Plex devices).
On the sound side, all I’ve got hooked up to the TV is a dinky, no-name soundbar. I’m currently considering upgrading to a Sonos Playbar, and I’ll most likely be adding the Subwoofer and sattelite speakers down the line. My biggest concern about the Playbar is that it only supports optical audio–will that mean none of my rips with DTS tracks will work?
When I watch on PC I use Bose Companion 5s, which could explain why some of the sound might have come out wonky. They’re stereo speakers but in the PC settings they show up at 5.1 since they do that weird, faux-surround thing.
Sorry, I don’t know Rokus, but you are right, those are considered pretty good Plex clients.
If you ask for tips in the Roku subforum, I’m sure you’ll get some help with it.
Regarding the PC use:
What channel number did you set in the properties of this audio interface in Windows?
(right-click on the speaker icon in the tray area, ‘Playback devices’, select interface, ‘configure’)
This needs to be correct.
If this is a regular PC, I recommend you to use Plex Media Player isntead of the web app.
This is a separate download (it is free, don’t confuse this with the Plex app from the Microsoft App store!)
The PC speakers are set to 5.1 (as recommended by Bose for these), and I actually do use the Plex Media Player.
Funnily enough, I’ve been doing some more research and came across some reviews for The Babadook in which they note that the audio mix is one of the weirdest sounding of anything they’ve ever heard. So maybe I just picked an awful case to test with.
Put the PMP into its full screen mode
then go into the settings
(under your user name)
Audio
Device Type = Basic
Channels = 2.0
Normalize Downmixed Volume = X
Try if this sounds better to you
and go back to Channels=5.1 if it doesn’t.
