Plex for apple tv 8.29 (7486) - 5.1 DTS audio files played as 2.0 stereo

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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Server Version#: 4.116.1
Player Version#: 8.29 (7486)

Hi,

After a night of troubleshooting, i came to the conclusion that something must have happend to my plex player. Than i saw 10 days ago it was updated.

My apple tv is connected to my Yamaha RX-A6A and plex plays movies and series in dolby atmos with no problem at all, all speakers are addressed, the amp shows they are dolby true audio, all is fine. When i select e.g. the youtube app and play a dolby atmos audio file all is well.

Back to plex i have a specific folder with dts files. Up until recently these files played flawless on my many speaker configuration. Until very recently.

Now when i play the DTS formatted audio files (WAV) the amp recieves but 2.0 stereo files and audio is limited to 2 speakers. When i press the standby button on the apple tv remote and select airplay, my amp will recognize this and after a brief pause it will switch to airplay and BOOM - multi channel audio is playing.

Again, this is ONLY when playing the 5.1 DTS wav files, 5.1 DTS movie files have perfect multichannel audio, atmos movies have atmos support, no problem at all.

I’m a bit confused because i had a hard time getting plex to read the MP3 tags of my files to list them properly in my ‘unknown artist’ folder and i did a lot of settingschanges, so maybe i accidently did somthing in this process but i dont find a way to retrace those steps back this specific audio player format.

I can only think of an oddity in the recently updated plex app, because without any other changes playing a DTS video file is working properly, yet an only audio file does not.

Could anybody shine some light on this?

Many thanks in advance!

EDIT: my LG TV has the LG Plex app and when on the same account i play the same DTS files from my server - they DO work in multi channel. It’s only on the appletv plex app.

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Update:

I asked a friend with the same apple tv and same app to play my files. It seems he gets a bandwith of 3mbit, whilst my local player only seems to permit 128kbs, the log shows:

Reached Decision id=69401 codes=(General=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK. Direct Play=3000,App cannot direct play this item. Direct play is disabled. Transcode=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK.) media=(id=83538 part=(id=125815 =transcode protocol=http streams=(Audio=(id=226602 =transcode bitrate=121 encoder=libopus channels=2 rate=48000))))

And this seems to be valid for my user only, i dont see the negotiation when he’s playing the file.

I’m very much confused here, because the version of the app is the same, but it seems my apple tv has forgotten it can actually play DTS wav files!?

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And than, out of the blue… all is fine again… I dont know what made it ‘GO’ again, but i found these setting on reddit and amongst other things, i checked those:

Below are the relevant settings that enabled direct streaming for me:

  • home streaming: max
  • internet streaming: max
  • auto adjust quality: Off
  • Allow direct play: On
  • Use old video player: Off

But I played around with the amp as well, still the amp shows stereo 2.0 and output speakers 5.0.4. Still strange is that it does not do 5.2.4. in otherwords, it does not address the subs, whilst with airplay it does. But at least it’s adressing all the speakers again, and plex doesnt whine about unable to play shizzle anymore:

Dec 16, 2023 12:01:24.597 [13876] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.1.230:64386 (Subnet)] GET /:/timeline?bufferedTime=390&col=1&context=source%3Acontent.library&duration=390972&key=%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F69610&location=lan&playQueueItemID=83515&playbackTime=170750&ratingKey=69610&row=1&state=playing&time=170986 (14 live) #479db TLS GZIP Signed-in Token (XXXX) (Apple TV)
Dec 16, 2023 12:01:24.598 [13876] DEBUG - [Req#479db] Client [85A-219C] reporting timeline state playing, progress of 170986/390972ms for guid=, playbackTime=170750ms ratingKey=69610 url=, key=/library/metadata/69610, containerKey=, metadataId=69610, source=
Dec 16, 2023 12:01:24.600 [13876] DEBUG - [Req#479db] Play progress on 69610 ‘Hotel California’ - got played 170986 ms by account 1!
Dec 16, 2023 12:01:24.602 [13876] DEBUG - [Req#479db] [Now] User is XXXX (ID: 1)
Dec 16, 2023 12:01:24.602 [13876] DEBUG - [Req#479db] [Now] Device is tvOS (Apple TV).
Dec 16, 2023 12:01:24.603 [13876] DEBUG - [Req#479db] [Now] Profile is tvOS
Dec 16, 2023 12:01:24.603 [13876] DEBUG - [Req#479db] [Now] Updated play state for /library/metadata/69610.
Dec 16, 2023 12:01:24.603 [13876] DEBUG - [Req#479db] Statistics: (85A-219C) Reporting active playback in state 0 of type 10 (scrobble: 0) for account 1
Dec 16, 2023 12:01:24.604 [12684] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.1.230:64386] 200 GET /:/timeline?bufferedTime=390&col=1&context=source%3Acontent.library&duration=390972&key=%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F69610&location=lan&playQueueItemID=83515&playbackTime=170750&ratingKey=69610&row=1&state=playing&time=170986 (14 live) #479db TLS GZIP 7ms 458 bytes (pipelined: 219)

I am at complete loss… for some reason it’s found all that it needed to play - and i’m happy.

To those reading it because they experience the same thing: good luck and feel free to add!

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