Hi, I noticed that if both AC3 and DTS are selected as Optical Passthrough, everything with a higher quality gets transcoded to AC3. Wouldn’t it be better (speaking of quality) to transcode to DTS instead? Is there any technical/licensing problem for which DTS is never transcoded to?
P.S. if I select only DTS as Passthrough, everything non-DTS gets transcoded to stereo AAC, and not DTS, hence the question.
Anyone?
It’s a licensing issue. It’s less supported by devices (due to licensing) than AC3 and AAC.
Both AC3 and DTS are royalty-free, though AC3 has much broader support than DTS
Ok, but doesn’t DTS have a higher quality than AC3? Why not transcode to DTS if it is set as Optical Passthrough? (Of course I mean for higher than DTS quality audio tracks)
A lot of soundbars and lower-end AVRs do not support DTS, and neither do many TVs, though all have support for AC3. So we’ve picked the most compatible codec in this case, so that you will get audio in all circumstances
Or let the user choose? So that users who have equipment with DTS decoding can get the best possible quality sound.
Why do things like this have to always be an either or, rather than giving the user choices?
Plex seems to be both a platform for tech savvy people (in our minds), and morons according to the company, the company favoring the latter.
You don’t have to say it explicitly, but it’s clear that is the thought by not letting the user decide.
I’m not aware of a decent DTS encoder that doesn’t come with licensing. I believe ffmpeg’s is experimental and not considered good quality.
Yeah my original question was exactly to know if the reason was technical/licensing or a simple choice of Plex. From Plex Employee’s answers I understand that it was a choice… Sad
@sixones I saw the release of version 8.26, but in the changelog I don’t see this enhancement mentioned.
Did it make it into the release?
My Sonos systems finally support DTS and now this happens.
All my TrueHD files are being transcoded to Opus 7.1 which Sonos will play in 2.0 stereo.
All my Sonos systems are connected to eARC on google / android Sony TVs.
I am setup to passthrough via HDMI.
Switching the passthrough to Optical was resuliting in transocding from 7.1 to 5.1 (better than stereo but still).
Downgrading my app to 8.23.0.27891 brings back True HD 7.1 → EAC3 7.1
I dont want to have to manually install this APK in all my TVs and disable auto updates. Will this be brought back soon?
I am getting really tired of the way Plex behaves. First off, it shouldn’t transcode audio just because it needs to transcode video. I know for a fact the clients in question support AC3, so why it needs to encode 192kbps AC3 to Opus or frickin’ MP3 is beyond me. I, as the server admin, should be able to dictate whether or not audio gets transcoded. If it’s some high bit rate lossless audio, then sure, transcode it to fit within the client’s bandwidth setting. But then I should be able to dictate WHAT to transcode to. Just because you devs like Opus or MP3 doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have the option anymore to encode to AC3. Don’t try to tell me what format I must use just because of your opinions of transparency. And claiming transparency when doing generational lossy encoding is just silly.
Why is this not getting any attention.
When can we expect this functionally to return.
I’m stuck listing to everything in stereo or max 5.1 due to this OPUS crap.
I’m following this thread, because I’m also experiencing some audio problems.
Setup:
I found out that DTS Surround is not working with HDMI Passthrough setting in Plex App. A workaround is when I switch in settings to optical (and check AC3 and DTS). DTS then works, although the TV and AVR are still connected via HDMI (and not optical/toslink).
Unfortunately (and this is where it gets annoying) is that with this setting (Optical Passthrough) Dolby Vision and Atmos are not working. So I have to switch back and forth to the settings and switch between HDMI (for Atmos) and Optical Passthrough (for DTS) to get the correct audio to play from the content I want to watch.
I saw some other users posts with this same issue, but there was no final solution, just the Optical Passthrough workaround.
It would be really nice to get HDMI Passthrough to work for all audio codecs in Plex App for Android TV.
For those using an ARC setup that are getting transcodes with Opus rather than AC3, the build below should resolve your issues:
Armv7: https://artifacts.plex.tv/android-experimental/8.29.0.30130-958c8a65/PlexForAndroid-8.29.0.30130-958c8a65-Armv7aGooglePlayStdExo.apk
Arm64: https://artifacts.plex.tv/android-experimental/8.29.0.30130-958c8a65/PlexForAndroid-8.29.0.30130-958c8a65-Arm64v8aGooglePlayStdExo.apk
Would you be able to try the build above and then fetch the logs for me if DTS is still not working? Be sure to switch back to Auto for passthrough instead of Optical. Steps on fetching the logs are available here; https://support.plex.tv/articles/201573117-android-android-tv-fire-tv-logs/
Thank you, is there a FireTV build?
@sixones did the changes from the beta build from Nov 21 above ever make it into the release version?
I really hoping they would eventually…
The release above will land in the next beta (sometime today), it doesn’t add the option for EAC3 into Optical but solves the issue where ARC connections would end up using Opus instead of AC3.
Ah, so I should be able to set the pass through to hdmi and that will direct play ac3, dts, and eac3. And convert 5.1 aac to ac3 and 7.1 aac to eac3 (this is the behavior in the roku app and very much prefer it) instead of opus, correct?
That’s right, if your setup supports 5.1 / 7.1 over PCM then it will still prefer Opus (if it needs to transcode). This is because its lighter on your server when it comes to transcoding and has reduced bandwidth when streaming to the client.
