Any issues with the following design if I want to avoid WiFi and get Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD?
- TV to Stereo Receiver via HDMI (eARC)
- Stereo Receiver to NVIDIA Shield via HDMI
- NVIDIA Shield to Router via Ethernet
- Synology 718+ to Router via Ethernet
Apologize, stereo receiver was the wrong name. It will be a Denon AVR-X3500H or AVR-X4500H.
Also, I picked the NVIDIA Shield as I cannot find another Plex client that supports Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD . I picked the 718+ as it has two Ethernet ports.
Thanks for the reply.
Is there another Plex client that supports Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD?
I’m surprised why Plex players on Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV Stick, etc. do not support TrueHD and DTS HD-MA.
Wealth of information. I had no idea it was due to licensing. Thank you for this.
I assume the passthrough is okay as the Denon receiver can handle the audio when it receives it.
Now I wonder why it still costs money just to allow the audio to passthrough.
AFAIK, RasPi definitely doesn’t support TrueHD and will only output the DTS component of a DTS-HD MA stream. In effect, it doesn’t support playback of HD audio. This is a hardware limitation of the chip driving the HDMI interface. I last looked into this about 6 months ago, so it may have changed since then.
Re. load balancing, bear in mind that with port bonding you still won’t be able to achieve a single stream greater than 1Gb/s (load balancing doesn’t allow individual data streams to be split over multiple physical links, it spreads the load of multiple data streams, based on MAC address). Port bonding is primarily for allowing mutliple high bandwidth clients to access a single server. You’ll also need a managed ethernet switch that supports LACP or LLCP. To be honest, I wouldn’t bother with it as you’re very unlikely to be able to saturate a single GigE link with a 2 disk NAS.
If NVIDIA Shield does a pass through, how comes Plex doesn’t also do it? What stops Plex from doing it?
Even bitstream passthrough of commercial audio formats requires licensing of that product from the rights holder, I believe.
- Plex client (not PMS) on a Shield will passthrough HD audio formats to a compatible connected receiver
- Plex client on a Shield will not decode HD audio formats and output as PCM to a compatible receiver
- PMS on a Shield will transcode HD audio formats to other formats for clients that do no support either passthrough or direct playback. This isn’t recommended, though, IMHO as the Shield is not very powerful
Wow, just passthrough of commercial audio formats requires licensing. So Plex didn’t license it, but NVIDIA did for DTS HD-MA and TrueHD.
No, Trumpy81 was quite clear: Plex Media Player client on Shield does support passthrough of HD audio to a compatible receiver
try plex for kodi on android, it may work
Correct. I’m referring to Plex Media Player client on Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV Stick. Why not pass through on these three devices also? Why only pass through on the Sheld?
Also, I’m specifically referring about passing through DTS HD-MA and TrueHD on the three devices mentioned above.
1 Like
The only three options I am aware of for playback DTS HD-MA or TrueHD (at this time) are:
- Nvidia shield with Official Plex app (other apps are also capable)
- Apple TV with the Infuse 6 Pro app
- Any computer capable of outputting those audio formats using Plex Media Player (not the Web app)
Historically, Plex has utilized the default playback engine provided by each platform within the Plex app. The Apple TV, Roku, and (any) Amazon Fire TV do not support DTS HD-MA or TrueHD.
Some of these devices do support Dolby Atmos, but know that does not mean the same thing as TrueHD support. Atmos is primarily played via E-AC3 on these streaming devices.
Plex has recently been developing their own media player engine, and I expect that it will eventually support DTS HD-MA and TrueHD on all devices that are capable of bitstreaming the audio to your AV receiver. (This is how the Nvidia Shield works (because the default playback engine of the shield supports it, and how the Infuse app on Apple TV works.)
This new player is currently available on the Apple TV though it does not support these audio formats (yet.)
1 Like
There’s a few things that have to line up for this to work:
- OS support
- app support
- hardware support
Plex Media Player obviously supports it, but if the hardware it’s running on doesn’t you’re out off luck.
Fire Stick likely supports Dolby Atmos because it’s the chosen audio codec for Amazon Prime Video UHD content. Likewise, Apple will tailor their codec support to the content available from iTunes. Why pay for licenses for content you’re not trying to sell to your customers? Amazon and Apple don’t give a damn about a freeloader like Plex 
Remember that most of this hardware (Roku, Apple TV, Fire Stick) is designed to support Internet streaming content, which is by nature much lower bitrate than content played off a local, physical, Bluray disk. Plex, however, is designed from the ground up to support content ripped (legitimately or not) from those physical disks, but the Plex client has to sit on top of that hardware/software designed for Internet streaming. Those audio tracks would playback quite happily from a Blu-ray player (with all the correct hardware and licenses in place) to a connected AV receiver and your TV.
We’re trying to play content from one medium, on hardware designed for a subtley different medium, and it doesn’t always work out.
And note it (and the Apple TV) support Dolby Atmos only via the E-AC3 codec. So the bitrate is significantly lower than Dolby Atmos via TrueHD. And non-Atmos surround sound on these services/devices is typically 640kbps AC3 audio (that’s DVD quality btw.)
I enjoy streaming services, but when it comes to quality, physical media is still superior. I look at it like this: 4k HDR content on Netflix and Amazon is the visual equivalent of a standard Blu-Ray with DVD quality audio (but with HDR)
1 Like
Yeah “Dolby Atmos” is a bit of a tricky customer. It has a very wide definition, nowhere near as clean cut as DTS or DD/AC3.
It’s marketing fluff, at the end of the day, allowing for cinemas with 64 speakers, high-end home theatre with 24+ channels, a TV with 5.1 or a smartphone to all carry the Dolby Atmos label if you pay Dolby the licensing fee 
1 Like
Thank you both for the explanation. I’ve been searching for this information for a while and could not find it.
I did not know audio was so much more complicated than video.
For fun, I’m going to see what it would take and cost to build a HTPC running Win10 connected to Denon receiver via HDMI 2.0a.
Okay, I did a bit more research and, surprise surprise, it’s complicated!
There’s a very enlightening post on the subject over on the Kodi forums.
tl;dr
- no current RasPi has the audio system bandwidth to bitstream TrueHD or DTS-HD MA over HDMI (requires 7.1, 24-bit, 192kHz)
- Kodi can, however, transcode to 5.1 or 7.1 at 96kHz and output as PCM over HDMI, but your AV receiver will not recognise this as TrueHD or DTS-HD MA (because it’s been decoded already)
- there is no support at all for DTS:x or Dolby Atmos. The poster claims there is no open-source decoder for these formats (this was November 2017, so that may have changed) and there is not enough bandwidth on a RasPi to bitstream them
Also, the RasPi can’t, of course, do 4k/HDR video (which is why I moved away from Rasplex when I got my 4k TV 
).
Don’t you love Patents & Licensing? 
1 Like
