Server Version#: 4.136.1
Player Version#: 1.103.1.238cbba6
My PC decided it didn’t want to boot today, so I reinstalled Windows 11. Had backups of everything, so nbd.
However, when I decided to call it a day, after setting up a ton of stuff, Plex decided to have no audio.
Here’s what has happened since I first found there was no audio.
- Tried to watch a video. No audio. Tested another video - no audio. Tested another video - there IS audio. And another - there is audio.
- Tested videos that played with audio yesterday, before I reinstalled Windows. No audio now.
- Tested the audioless videos on Plex on my laptop, and they were fine.
- Watched what I wanted to watch with VLC. Audio was fine. Now I’m back at it, trying to figure this out.
- I tested out changing the audio settings under “Player.” They didn’t do anything.
- I knew it was probably not my audio hardware or drivers. But I uninstalled them entirely, and reinstalled. Gave the PC a few restarts. PC audio is totally fine, but still no audio from some Plex videos. (Note, this has never been a problem for me in the 3 years I’ve been using Plex on various devices).
Plex is updated. I restarted my server.
Both the client and server being used are running on Windows 11.
I checked out a set of videos that have audio, and don’t have audio, and quickly found a pattern. All the files without audio have the EAC3 codec. None of the working ones have that one. (Tested 8. 4 had no audio and were using EAC3).
— (There was about 12 hours between these two sections being written.)
I tried deleting the codecs on the Plex Server, as suggested in a Reddit thread.
Only one codec folder repopulated, and it caused more issues (this time some videos just not playing). I saw this coming, so I didn’t actually delete the codecs, and I put them back. Though I did notice there are two versions of the EasyAudioEncoder in there. I tried both separately, and together, and nothing changed about anything.
I’ve found that if I open Plex in a browser on my PC, the videos play totally fine, with audio.
So, it’s just the Plex desktop app on my main PC having this problem. (I have uninstalled, restarted the PC, and reinstalled, 3 times now.)
I was wondering if it had something to do with the way Plex transcodes to stream to local devices, since all the devices that are either on wifi, or not on my network at all, are totally fine. But my PC and the server are both hardwired.
So I tested the one other PC that is hardwired, and it’s working totally fine on that PC.
There is something wrong with Plex interacting with this new install of Windows.
I have the full K-Lite codec pack installed on my PC as always. But I don’t think that should affect Plex either way.
Additionally, this isn’t surprising, but just to include more info: The audio for these files doesn’t work on my physical speakers, and also on bluetooth heaphones. As would be expected.
I’ve uninstalled, reinstalled, updated, turned off and on again, all the my audio hardware, and drivers, everything. All the audio for everything works on my PC. Zero audio issues, except for AEC3 codec videos playing on the Plex desktop app.
I’m losing my mind.
