The new beta has been very positive for me so far, good work!
My setup is an nVidia Shield Android TV hooked up to an old Denon AVR3801 using a USB dongle. Since a couple of releases back Dolby Digital AC3 started working with passthrough when I had my system settings set to “Automatic” in the Shield Advanced Audio config, Surround setting.
DTS however is a different story. To make this work in Plex, I had to set the mentioned setting to “Always” to kind of force the passthrough. This has a side effect of making other apps misbehave, such as Netflix, which will then refuse to play certain content.
Since my setup can only do AC3 and DTS, no HD-audio, I would like some way of telling Plex/ExoPlayer to please passthrough these formats and don’t rely on HDMI capabilities since I don’t have a HDMI setup.
In the last beta, DTS started playing but then as Pro Logic since it is being decoded in software. Would it be possible to make ExoPlayer force passthrough for AC3/DTS?
The last beta included a fix to ensure AC3 and DTS are passed through if possible, however for this to work Android needs to tell Plex that it’s capable of passing this over.
Would you be able to grab some logs? Never heard of hooking up an AVR with a USB cable, how does this work, does Android know the capabilities of the USB device?
OFC, see attached. On 4 feb, around 13:15 Ive started playing Cars 3 (AC3) with my surround preference in the Shield Advanced sound settings set to “Always”. And plex then does passthrough with AC3 to my AVR. Playback always starts with an audible pop (same with Kodi/SPMC though).
Next up, I’ve set the surround setting to “Automatic”. In that case the same movie (Cars 3) plays with Pro Logic, AC3 is being decoded as software. Then after that, Vaiana using DTS (non-HD, just 5.1) also to software decoding.
Problem is, I can’t leave the Shield advanced sound settings to Always, because then other apps will misbehave. I’d just like to tell Plex that AC3 and DTS 5.1 is always OK to passthrough. SPMC has settings which specifically allow to only force passthrough AC3 and DTS 5.1, which is great for me.
To clarify, Android TV in my case has some additional settings for sound:
Display & Sound -> Advanced settings -> USB audio mode = Surround sound 5.1 and Surround Sound (Always, Automatic, Never). The USB audio mode was introduced some firmware revisions back to allow for USB dongles for people with old optical AVR’s like me.
Also, the USB dongle in question:
https://shop.turtlebeach.com/us/audio-advantage-micro-ii
Also, a while back I opened this ticket on the ExoPlayer Github project:
Thanks for the information and a link to the device! When we bring support for optical passthrough, this should also fix your issues and allow you to passthrough AC3 and DTS!
Until then you could let the new player on Android decode AC3 and DTS for you, this would allow you listen to AC3 and DTS without doing server side transcodes. It would be passed to your AVR as PCM in the same channel configuration and sample rate as the input.
Thanks! I wasn’t aware you were going to do optical support, that would indeed fix my issues.
Every version seems to be different regarding how audio works on my setup these days. Sometimes I get AC3, sometimes just PCM which the receiver turns into Pro Logic. Optical coming anytime soon? Or just the setting to force IEC passthrough for AC3 and DTS?
