After ripping a bluray with audio set to 384kbps/6 channels (5.1) at 48khz, the resulting file plays perfectly. I updated the Plex media library, and the title shows up as expected. When I play the file in Plex on the machine where I’m running Plex Server (in Chrome browser), the audio level is about 75% of the volume level when I play the file back in the Windows native ‘Movies & TV’ video file player. That is, I have to turn up the volume about 25% while in the Plex player to get the same level of sound as when playing in the Windows player.
Also, the Windows player uses all 6 speakers, nicely filling my room with sound, sending spoken audio to the center channel, ambient sounds and music to the front-left, rear-left, rear-right, and front-right satellite speakers, and all the low-end to the subwoofer on the floor. Plex seems to use only center, front left, front right, and subwoofer channels, sending all audio to just those three speakers equally, and at the lower level noted above.
I’ve played with the audio controls in Plex that I can find, and I hear no difference, no matter what I change.
Can anyone provide thoughts on what I might look for to get audio working in Plex as well as it works in the Windows Movies & TV app?
Where $videofile is the video file you are trying to make louder and $loudness = 3 for 3 dB. Finally, $louderfile is the name of the output video file. Test to see if it’s to your taste and move into place.
I’m curious if the audio is transcoding in Plex when you play it in chrome
Do you have another android client like a Firestick or Nvidia Shield you can test this on?
Besides all that, low audio in Plex is a known issue for some people and nobody seems to know why
I haven’t read most of that thread but it seems to revolve around 5.1 for some reason.
There is a few people in there that found solutions for their specific problem but this doesn’t appear to be a one size fits all situation. Maybe you can try some of the things they mentioned though
JaysPlex7, thanks for the quick reply. I followed the steps to add the launch config items to Chrome, and none of them made any difference that I could detect. The volume on all Plex audio remains about 75% of all other audio sources on my computer. You can imagine the mail notification alerts completely drowning out the audio track, not to mention the annoyance factor from other people in other rooms of my house… I also checked Plex on Edge and Firefox, and all three browsers reflect the same low audio level.
I looked at every volume-related setting I could find and tried every setting possible, and none of them made any discernable difference.
I tried running the Android Plex player on my Samsung S21, and while the volume was slightly better, I still had to set it to 65-70% to get clear audio, but I can get clear audio at 30-40% for most other apps. I also use the Plex player that I can install on my Samsung Vizio TV. It behaves much more like my PC than the phone - I have to set volume to 70-75% to get close to reasonable, but every other app on the TV is clearly understandable at 10-20 on the TV volume.
I didn’t read every entry in the “Let’s finally solve” thread, but I read enough to know that this problem is old and people as recently as this month are still complaining about it.
It feels like a problem in the Plex code, not my audio equipment or other devices, since the problem is present only with Plex. I never heard of Emby until I read this thread, so I just downloaded and did a comparison between the two. There’s no doubt to me now - the sound in Emby is the same as Windows Movies & TV player (comparing the same file without touching the volume control on the PC).
I’ll remain open to fixes from Plex, but if such a big problem has been an issue for several years, I don’t have much hope they’ll address it any time soon.
Chrome 
hmmm 
