Server Version#: 1.24.4.5081
Player Version#: 8.24.0.28407
The latest Android update:
Mentions being able to choose the audio target for transcoding, but how??
“Player: allow AAC LATM, FLAC, MP1, MP2, Opus and Vorbis as transcode audio targets.”
Prior to this update eAC3 was automatically transcoded to AC3, because I have audio passthrough set to optical with AC3 and DTS support checked.
Now eAC3 is being transcoded to Opus and I can’t figure out how to change the target back to AC3?
Exact same issue. Following. 
This appears to be the same issue reported in the beta:
Apparently Plex developers don’t know that optical only supports 2 channel PCM. One employee told me that Opus is better, supports 5.1 and will be converted to PCM 5.1 and sent to my receiver.
Yeppers. PCM 2.0 only through toslink. I am getting really tired of paying for Plex pass if these idiots don’t even know the basics.
Lol. Just devices most of use. i.e. Receivers, shield…
They are determined to be another Pluto tv and just keep pushing these Beta’s out as stable. Emby, Kodi time.
Crap I accidentally deleted my post. To reiterate
In response to this breaking change @DaveBinM told me that ‘Plex needs to do what’s best for the greatest number of users’ and ‘there aren’t many devices that support passthrough, other than Android and Linux/windows HTPC’
Reading between the lines, too few users are affected for Plex to address this.
Stop cherry-picking different comments on different topics. As a general comment, Opus is a superior quality codec than AC3, and for users using HDMI rather than optical, it’s a vastly better experience. Devices not supporting passthrough was a separate comment regarding what devices would be affected by this change. We can look into preferring AC3 for optical passthrough, but my comments were around why this change was made in the first place, and why it benefits many other users.
Thank you, that’s why I @you, this is the first I’m hearing you say Plex might fix this.
From what you were saying earlier in response to my query on this breaking change for optical.
‘Opus is an incredible codec, and is transparent for music at 128kbps, so I dunno why you’d want to use another one if it has to transcode’
‘Opus is a higher quality codec than AC3, and the device will decode it and send PCM out to your receiver’
‘Opus supports 5.1
So, it should transcode it to opus 5.1’
This along with the previous comments gave the impression that Opus is what Plex is using now.
I think there are a lot of us that would be grateful to have 5.1AC3 over the higher quality Opus to 2channel PCM
As I stated, for every user who isn’t using optical, this is a much-improved experience, it’s only when using optical passthrough that you don’t get as many channels.
Is there going to be a fix for those of us using optical? I have audio passthrough set to Optical AC3 and for some reason it’s still focing the 2 channel OPUS codec. I’ve lost surround sound on all my media to my sonos speakers with this update and am looking to roll back now to 8.23.1
Apologises for the regression in behaviour for optical passthrough, a fix should be available in the next beta release.
Another Sonos user chiming in, this is causing me issues as well and I use HDMI to Sonos amp. It is converting all my aac 5.1 media to stereo OPUS. It worked great before converting aac 5.1 to ac3. A way to revert back would be appreciated.
Rolling back to Plex version 8.23.1 has fixed the issue for me for the time being
In my xiaomi Tv box idem. The old version was more useful for me. My sound system is worst now because the Plex update
Thanks for this thread. My setup has been screwed since this update. I think Plex support should realise they have a lot of Sonos users that use the optical pass-though option as a hack to force AC3 that is compatible with the Beam and Playbar even when connected via HDMI.
I’m connected through HDMI earc (Sony 85xh9096 tv) and also have the issue.
All truehd and AAC are transcoded to opus 2.0 since last version.
All DTS and AC3 works fine.
Ps: Please tell me if it’s not the right place to post.
I use HDMI and Optical, this change was horrid, it broke 4 TVs, 3 of mine and one of a family member. OPUS may be better on paper but as far as compatibility it is NOT.
Also, most will never be able to tell the difference between OPUS or AC 5.1 so why push for a way less compatible and, for 95% of the users completely indifferent quality.
Please revert this back or allow us to choose what codec to decode with. I would think a company would be more focused on compatibility over such a slight improvement of quality that most will never know the difference. One creates and keeps more customers, the other loses customers.
I would like to add, these days the savings in bitrate for the quality of the audio is a non-issue for home networks, most everyone has 1 gig network. Audio just does not impact bandwidth anymore so the idea we need to push some super compression for the higher quality codec is pretty much tech nonsense.
I confirm rolling back to 8.23 fixed the issue for me.
Until I found this post, I thought my Shield TV pro had some sudden technical issue. I use a usb dac for optical out to my AVR, which doesn’t support HDMI input and later codecs, other than DD and DTS.
Suddenly, I could listen only to left/right channel but no center channel, which provides most of the voices, so I could hear music and effects but no dialog or center action in general. Then I noticed the transcoding saying (AAC - OPUS) and a google search brought me here. So chalk up one more complaint regarding this change… I had to uninstall the app and install an older version to get things back to normal, but this means I had to switch auto updates off for all the apps…
so appreciate to have a heads up here, when the problem is fixed, thanks!
The issue should be fixed in the latest beta; Release Announcements - Android TV beta - #477 by geosidi
