Plex does well passing through audio for .MKV’s. Why not for MKA’s and .M4A’s??
.MKA is for audio files-- so–pass through the audio for audio files! My .mka’s are for surround sound audio, like DTS and Atmos. But Plex messes it up by transcoding to stereo. Please don’t. Just pass it through please!
There’s already an existing thread discussing an option for Plex to support multi-channel music. I suggest you comment/vote in that thread in order to help us avoid distracting or cannibalizing votes. Unless I’m missing some unique aspect of your suggestion I’ll close this thread as a duplicate.
Nope that is NOT what I am asking for. I am asking for Plex to keep its hands off my audio. I am not asking it to “support” anything. Which should be a trivial feature since I’m asking to simply pass it through. My request has NOTHING to do with the “first class support” feature.
Right?
1 Like
Based on all I know, Plex doesn’t support surround music – hence it’ll transcode your songs to a stereo format.
The other thread is exactly about adding support for surround music – including direct playback on platforms that can deal with it. Isn’t that what you’re asking for?
I’ll try again. I assume you understand what “passthrough” is. It’s Plex passing the audio channel directly to the receiver. There is no “support”, no processing, no transcoding whatsoever. It hands off the audio work to your receiver.
Plex has this option for .MKV’s for movies. Plex passes audio directly to your receiver to play stereo, multichannel, etc. Plex doesn’t care what it is. It does nothing.
.MKA’s are EXACTLY the same thing; the only difference is the Matroska package has no video stream. Plex merely has to treat the .MKA EXACTLY like an .MKV and pass the audio AGAIN to the receiver.
In fact, if I rename the .MKA to .MKV Plex does exactly that…correctly passes the audio stream to my receiver. So yes, I could rename all my .MKA collection to .MKV. But that messes up all my other uses for my .MKA in order to make Plex play nice. So, once again, Plex should enable audio passthrough of .MKA/.M4A files, just like it does for .MKV’s etc.
Is that more clear? This has NOTHING to do with the older thread on transcoding multichannel audio!! This is a PASSTHROUGH request.
If this isn’t clear now I give up.
1 Like
Let’s forget I ever mentioned “surround”. This is not a surround issue. It’s a few lines of code that treats .MKAs exactly like .MKVs. The code is already finished; just add .MKA filetypes to behave the same as .MKV.
1 Like
I have the same request with audio .mka
I also wish they would “passthrough” ALL my Video audio as well.
I currently have to remove ANY audio that has 7.1 channels from my Blu-ray collection I have digitized, or it transcodes my 4K video to 1080p.
I would love for plex to just allow “passthru” to my audio/Video Receiver. (It is one year old, and understands e-ac3, Dolby Atmos, DTS-X and everything else)
Thank you in advance for passing this simple request along.
Plex handles audio files and video files differently. You should open up a different thread for your video file issues, so not to dilute the conversation on this thread regarding multi-channel audio files.
That written, the capabilities of Plex clients vary quite a bit depending on their operating system and hardware. For video files, the only device that will passthrough all the audio formats you mention is the Nvidia Shield Pro. Ideally, it should be connected to an HDMI input on your receiver, as not all TVs passthrough all audio formats for devices connected to their HDMI inputs.
Woogetbop is asking for the same new thing I am. Pass through.audio MKA.
And I have several Nvidia shields.
Simple feature request.
I was addressing the comment regarding audio tracks in video files.
Support for multi-channel audio only files on Android/Android TV devices is a long standing request. There are several threads in the forum, many mentioning multi-channel FLAC music, music from SACD discs, and from other sources.
A different API is used for audio only media than what is used for media that may contain both video and audio. This seems to be the sticking point.
The most recent Plex employee comment I’ve seen is: Amazon Fire Cube not playing multichannel audio properly - #11 by DaveBinM
I’ve several multi-channel albums in my music collection. It would be nice if Plex could support them on the Shield.
1 Like
Beating the same drum. Avoid the API. PASSTHROUGH. PASSTHROUGH. PASSTHROUGH.
For what it’s worth, I don’t want transcoding. That’s always Plan B, while passthrough is the ideal choice. But on hardware where that’s not an option (like Apple TV), I’d rather have the correct channel layout in another format over just assuming all music is 2 channels.
FYI, the recent Playstation (4 and 5) client does a pretty good job.
Frankly, if you cannot do something like passthrough, then make an option to associate certain files types with a third party player.
Obviously, the Plex player is useless for anything but stereo.
For that reason - although I have a lifetime pass - I’m looking for another media centre app.
free emby plays everything the right way. I am to emby for playing m4a surround. It is pitty because I like the plex interface more
