Server Version#: 1.25.3.5409
Player Version#: 8.29
I have run into an issue on my chromebook (a lenovo duet 5, which is an arm based chromebook) that when using the android app and playing back 5.1 content, all I get are either front left and right or surround left and right channels, no center channel, meaning vocals do not play, and making things unwatcheable.
My searching has turned up that this is likely a chrome os issue where chrome reports 6 available channels to the android system, which then assumes they are all there, so it does not downmix audio. The actual device however only has stereo speakers at best, so channels just do not play.
This was apparently solved in a prior version of chrome os, but it also appears that at some point they may have changed the android runtime, which never incorporated the fix.
Plex unfortunately does not provide the option to select how many audio channels there are or to specifically request just audio transcoding/downmixing. There are some workarounds. Using a usb headphone adapter (dac) seems to report the number of channels correctly so audio is downmixed properly through headphones (my duet 5 has no built in headphone jack), and the other option is to use plex web through the chrome browser. Using through chrome works well enough, but is lacking support for hevc, which forces transcoding more than I would prefer, and does not work great with touch controls. I still have also encountered at least one file (with aac5.1 audio) that does not play the center channel even through chrome.
I am posting to see if there are any solutions I may have missed, or to see if others are experiencing the same issue, or just to get some visibility.
There are past threads about this on the plex forums (but they have been closed):
Plex unfortunately does not provide the option to select how many audio channels there are or to specifically request just audio transcoding/downmixing.
As the person who reopened this ticket with the Chrome devs, and someone who also struggles with the soft vocals (low volume) issue when playing 5.1 content on my server when using a 2.1 system, an option to manually downmix audio from within PLEX would be AMAZING at solving multiple issues for me. I’m certain people have been clamoring for this for a while, but alas, it is not available.
Yea, I mean I realize this isnt a plex issue, but it would be great to have a little more control as a client over what you receive and what can be transcoded and how. I am of course not expecting them to implement this, especially again just because of one bug that really isnt necessarily even a plex bug.
It seemed like there were a lot of replies to the previous thread and the initial bug report, but this new one doesnt seem to be receiving any real attention so I wonder if its still all working fine for some.
This isn’t a Plex issue per se, but it shows the fundamental need for control over some of the backend tasks. And as I mentioned before, the low volume issue has plagued PLEX from the outset, and allowing configuration of downmixing would be a huge leap in fixing that issue: Let's finally solve the low audio issue please
And as you mentioned you have an ARM device, my device we x86, so no, it’s not an architectural hardware issue, it’s a software issue.
Well glad to know its not just limited to arm devices. Though I do wonder why so few people seem to be reporting it when the previous threads and bug reports seemed to have a decent amount of responses.
As for plex… well I get the feeling that this level of control is just something they are very unlikely to add. I think they are definitely aiming for their product to be on the simpler and more user friendly side of things, and I would just be surprised if they added it in when they dont even have options server side to control who can and cant transcode files.
Anyways, really just hope to get some attention brought to this because its quite frustrating.
Yes, I use a url that points directly to my server, so essentially the same thing, plex web. It seems to work because chrome doesn’t go through the android system on the chromebook, so it almost certainly has the correct number of audio channels reported and does the proper downmixing on the device.
It is however a bit of a lesser experience for two reasons. First, no real touch controls. It works well enough with touch, but its clearly not designed for it. Second, it doesnt support as many codecs, meaning that things that may have direct played on the android app will have to be transcoded for the chromebook.
Either way, I use the web app as well, and its fine for the most part, but as I said, limited a little. Thanks for confirming that its not seemingly just the two of us who have posted who are experiencing this.
