I’ve recently tried out Plex (both the Media Server and the Media Player), and have been having quite a bit of enjoyment with it, to the point where I’d like to move completely away from my previous media-player, Kodi. One lingering problem I’ve been having, though, is movies and TV shows that’re encoded in the E-AC3 audio-format for 5.1 surround-sound. In Kodi, I have no problem hearing the 5.1 audio with the ‘Enable Dolby Digital (AC3) transcoding’ option enabled, but in Plex, I can play 5.1 audio that’s in the older AC3 format, but when I try to play files with the E-AC3 format, I just get silence. I can disable the option to passthrough Dolby Digital Plus, but that just downmuxes it to stereo. Anyone know of a similar option in Plex, or some other add-on I can use? Thanks!
Your version number implicates you are using “Plex for Windows” and not “Plex Media Player”.
The player cannot transcode from E-AC3 to AC3.
You will have to disable the checkbox for “Passthrough Dolby Digital Plus” under Settings - Plex for Windows
My apologies; yes, it’s Plex for Windows on my media-server. And darn… I can disable the DD+ passthrough option, but it downmuxes it to just two channels. Alright, thanks for the confirmation.
What kind of Audio Device did you select in the player options?
Did you also select the right number of channels? Have you tried to set 5.1 instead of 7.1?
Have you tried the “Exclusive Audio” checkbox?
I select the ‘TOSHIBA TV’ option, which is what my ‘main’ audio device is (specifically the HDMI cable coming out of my video-card, which then goes into a switch and then into a HDMI-to-SPDIF adapter that goes into my receiver), and I do have it set to 5.1, yes. Haven’t tried enabling Exclusive Audio after setting up everything else, but I’ll give it a shot.
It could be, though, that my receiver can’t handle DD+ natively, given that it is somewhat old, and it works in Kodi because it transcodes the sound down to ‘normal’ AC3. The above setup is due to the fact it can only parse video through HDMI, not audio.
Ahh, that won’t work.
The player does decode E-AC3 into 5.1 PCM. However, SPDIF doesn’t have the bandwidth to transport 6 channels uncompressed. That only works with a HDMI connection.
So you need to set your device type to “Optical/S/PDIF” instead of HDMI.
Interesting… so it’s not necessarily with my receiver, but my setup. Sadly, though, setting it to S/PDIF means nothing works, whereas right now I can play everything but DD+.
