I have an intermittent issue where Plex HTPC’s audio settings will revert to “Auto Select” for device and all the manual settings for specifying HDMI, 7.1, and format supports will be default and need to be manually set again.
This issue is occurring on Plex HTPC with Plex Pass on Windows 11 with a NVIDIA GPU, Vizio soundbar, and everything connected via HDMI / eARC.
You can find identical reports of this issue from other users here: Reddit - Dive into anything
This has happened to me for … Forever.
I eventually gave up and got an Nvidia Shield for that TV. This also means no messing with Windows video settings like full/limited HDMI range. Wish I had done it a long time ago.
That said, it’s worth a fix if Plex HTPC is supposed to be a class A client. It’s extremely irritating to have to check the audio settings every session.
There are already threads on this.
For our setup, only ever happens if
A very rare event, moreso since they introduced the change many many versions ago that fixed the settings once set.
In other threads on the topic I’ve seen it caused by handshake issues when an AVR is in the chain or particular TVs that have HDCP/EDID issues.
If you don’t need passthrough (for example with no AVR in the chain), let Plex do everything - Auto. eARC along with ARC has it’s own demons 
I have been running Plex HTPC on AMD and NVIDIA based desktops (Win 10 and Win 11) since Plex HTPC was relaunched in its current form.
Apart from issues caused by our own hardware, it has been a very stable offering.
I don’t mess with full/limited HDMI range. Never had a need as it just works. I am constrained to HDMI 2.0b though due to our AVR so it is always RGB Full 8 bit 60 hz. Our TV auto detects the correct HDMI black.
I’ve played with an NVIDIA Shield and much prefer the Plex HTPC client on our Win 11 machine.
I can also confirm this behavior. Only when updating the driver I need to reselect the audio output.
I thought this was fixed after I posted one of the earlier threads on it and Plex released an update that sounded like it would address the problem. But in reality I just didn’t update my graphics drivers for a while.
HTPC NVIDIA HDMI 2.1 → TV → Sonos soundbar. Audio pass through.
Updating the NVIDIA driver causes all Plex HTPC audio settings to be lost. Which is a shame, because pass through via the TV means I need to manually set what the soundbar can do (as expected)
I update my GPU driver maybe once a month. Resetting audio settings takes me about 2 minutes.
I can deal with the minor inconvenience.
Note. I only have to change to HDMI and the passthrough options in settings as Auto works fine for everything else and all other audio settings stick.
Plex automatically recognises my BT headphones and when I switch back to my AVR.
My AVR needs Auto for speaker setup as it processes the channels as opposed to Plex doing it.
I’m glad you’re happy with your setup. Since the settings are lost silently, I’m willing to bet at least some users set up their audio once, lose them during a graphics driver update, never think to check audio settings again (“why would graphics affect audio?”) and wonder why passthrough is broken.
The workaround is certainly easy.
But it’s not very kid/family friendly. And it’s relatively unintuitive that it would break this way. The semi-regular Reddit and forum posts about the issue suggest that it does affect a reasonable number of people.
I think it’s worth talking about, since both Plex and multiple users thought the issue was addressed by an earlier update, but it’s actually still present.
I’m sure this was rhetorical but in most cases the GPU driver set contains the HDMI audio driver.
Anyone with a HTPC setup is almost always an enthusiast and knows how a driver update can impact EDID etc.
Plex HTPC came very close to disappearing forever so I am grateful it even exists.
I agree though, useful discussion.
I can confirm this issue also occurs in other scenarios besides a GPU driver updates, such as a Soundbar being detected again after a reboot / new CEC handshake etc.
Is there some location like a .ini file or registry entry etc. where these values are stored so a manual workaround can be applied to programmatically set desired saved values?
I have kept an eye out for the issue frequently now, and I believe one trigger is the hard power cycle of the sound bar.
For automatically changing Windows audio settings I think I have found a solution with Sound volume commmand line tool for Windows (see: windows 10 - Switching default audio device with a batch file - Super User)
However I have not identified the method to be able to programmatically change / set the audio options in Plex HTPC. If the location where these settings are stored was identified I could probably use task scheduler + batch file to trigger setting the right values on system boot and system resume from sleep.
Hi dancb2,
I think what you’re looking for is in here:
C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\Plex HTPC\plex.ini
I can see all of my devices in the array QtAudioDevices
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