How do I downmix 5.1 to 2 Channel Stereo by default?

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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1

This never used to be an issue for me but has been for the last few weeks. When playing a 5.1 film or tv episode I am hearing what sounds like only the ‘rear’ channels. This happens on all of my TVs using an Amazon Fire TV Stick. In particular, movies I have watched previously on these same devices without issue (and all other media presenting the same problem) now require me to force a transcode in order to hear the full audio as stereo. The issue does not present for me in either the Plex Web App, Plex for Windows 10, or Plex Android app.

I have checked the following settings:
Plex App Settings:
Audio Quality - Internet Quality is only available setting to change, not relevant to issue as content is on local network.
Advanced - Audio Passthrough - Tried both ‘Off’ and ‘Auto’ with no change in issue.

FireStick Settings:
Display & Sound - Audio - Dolby Digital Output - Tried “Dolby Digital Plus Off” and “Dolby Digital Plus Automatic” and neither eliminates issue.

I don’t know where else there are relevant settings to be adjusted. Any suggestions, or known fixes, appreciated.

2

Same exact issue. Frustrating. Tried all that as well.

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3

just found this thread same issue for me is there a fix?

4

There is an option in the Fire TV settings (not Plex settings) to specify the type of audio output you want. Turn off Dolby Digital Plus.

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5

Same problem here, but happening in Windows. Doesn’t matter if I use the Windows store Plex app, or the download from Plex’s website. ANY idea??

6

I’m just now noticing this on Android TV. Issue is only with Plex app. If I lower quality enough to force stereo transcode issue is resolved. 5.1 to stereo works fine on Netflix.

Edit: just tested Chromecast to same Android TV device and no issues. Issue is specific to the Android TV Plex app.

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7

Still have this issue after months. Really frustrating because Plex is unusable for anything with 5.1 sound. Stereo TV, Fire stick is set to “Dolby Digital Plus OFF” (it says HDMI is providing stereo quality audio). Any time I play an AC3 5.1 video in plex I can’t hear anything from what would be on the center channel (i.e. voices) making videos unwatchable.

Literally every other app I use on the Fire Stick works fine in terms of audio. My other TV (Sony) has android built in and the Plex on that started getting a bug where it plays the first few seconds and then thinks the video is over. Only solution is to pause right when playing starts and wait for it to buffer for a minute, but this bug has been around for months too.

8

Plex seems to have made some updates and now all my DTS content isn’t transcoded to Dolby digital for the fire TV. So, the fire TV only outputs stereo sound. Please give us an option for this version to force Dolby digital. It used to work perfectly, but now you’ve screwed it up.

9

This is also happening for me on a Nexus Player that is hooked to a stereo only TV. It keeps playing in 5.1 and I need to crank the volume up like 4x the normal volume to hear anything… very annoying!

I guess I’ll lower the video stream settings below ‘original’ so it forces a transcode… the funny part is that it is actually already transcoding the audio from EAC3 5.1 -> AAC 5.1…

edit: forced to 4MB/s, and it still wants to output 5.1…

10

still no answer or what?

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11

I’m running in to the same problem. There are times where I want to watch a movie on a TV without a 5.1 setup and this makes it impossible… You have to constantly turn the volume and down depending on what is happening in the movie… Frustrating.

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12

It’s Plex. You will never get a bug fix. Consider it a “feature” and live with it.

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13

Same issue on the shield TV. Mildy infuriating. Can confirm its the android tv app, the plex addon for kodi on the same device doesn’t have the issue.

14

Still no update on this? I’m having the same issue with my Roku TVs. I can’t change audio to stereo like I could on Roku 3. Allowing an option to force to stereo from 5.1 would be great.

16

Uninstall Fire version and sideload the android version of plex. Fixed it for me.

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18

Still a problem in the windows application. Does anyone found a solution to this?

20

I was having this problem watching movies on an iPad connected to a projector. I was able to solve it by running the audio directly from the iPad’s headphone jack to the speaker rather than over HDMI to the projector and then from the projector to the speaker by 3.5mm audio cable.

Maybe that helps someone.

21

The only way to force down-mix to stereo without sacrificing video quality would be to edit the Android player profile in the Plex Media Server to make it transcode anything with more than 2 channels. The profile can then be saved as an user profile so it won’t be overwritten by a Server update.
This would affect the FireTV and any other Android client as I understand.
I could help if the Server is running on Mac or Windows. For other platforms I don’t know where the profiles are stored and how you would edit them.

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22

I am having the same issues with the firestick where multi channel is not down coded to stereo. I can’t help thinking that after this length of time this should have been resolved. The firestick is a very popular streaming device and it must affect a significant number of people. I started researching this and expected to come up with a quick answer instead I found a problem thats been raised by a lot of people in various forums for more than two years. The forum guidance states that it welomes constructive criticism and on this basis there seems to have been a failure to listen to the feedback from users about a basic problem that requires a solution.

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23

+10

Same problem w/ Roku player. Audio output is 5.1 no matter what. No problem on my older (~2014) Samsung TV.

1 Like