I haven’t seen any official attention from Plex on the couple of forum posts about this issue.
Roku Support took my info and some specific details to escalate it.
It does seem like a Roku bug and I expect it will get resolved eventually since the bug is also in their Roku Media Player app… as long as they get reports about it. Local file playback isn’t as much of their customer base as the streaming services so I hope people are contacting them as well to get attention on it. Contact them here: Roku
I was hoping Plex might have a developer track to help push it along with Roku or maybe help with the issue at the application level so I’m disappointed there’s been no response from them.
This is extremely annoying. I’ve started to notice this particularly on 4K content. The type of audio soundtrack doesn’t seem to matter. Just getting persistent audio dropouts/hiccups.
Side note: This issue appears to be limited to my Rokus. I have an Nvidia Shield as well and I haven’t noticed it there despite using the same files/Plex servers.
I have found that turning off Direct Play (but leaving Direct Stream enabled) mitigates the issue for the most part - a suggestion from another user on this bug.
I get a bit of audio hiccup occasionally if I “skip intro” right away on a TV show as the server catches up from the immediate FF, I think, but audio is in sync from them on.
This does not trigger transcoding for me (though might depending on subtitles) as it’s just remixing the container if I understand the KB on it correctly.
Just a small note that Roku released a minor revision update to Ultra and TV (looks like yesterday 2020-12-10) but that did not fix this audio bug for me.
Sorry for crossposting the same info to different threads… since none of them have any official responses it’s hard to know which is getting any notice to make this info useful for others (and I’ve seen a few other new threads as well).
I just want to chime in here and say that I am having the same problems as placeman:
I have a Roku ultra running on the latest firmware as well as the Plex app on the latest firmware. I’ve tried restarting everything but it seems to happen intermittently about every 10 to 15 minutes during play. File type, bitrate, audio type, etc., doesn’t seem to matter.
I will try the direct stream workaround mentioned in this thread, but I hope this gets a real fix soon as it is super annoying!
I got a reply from Roku, essentially a generic remove Plex, update Roku TV, restart Roku TV, add plex and try again, they also had me reset the Audio/Video settings. I still get the same results and I replied that to them.
The more of you that open tickets for this problem, the more they may see this as a real issue.
I now cannot get to the “Expert Picture settings” within the Roku Android app (to re-apply my calibration settings after being directed to reset audio/video settings by Roku. This is frustrating.
“Me too”. Roku ultra, HDMI to a TV which outputs audio via optical to a 2.1 sound bar. Same setup I’ve had for six years. Fiddling with direct stream stuff will sometimes make it better, but also sometimes makes the video re-buffer every minute or so, which is maddening.
might be some good news, check your roku updates, my tcl roku tv updated this morning to 9.4 build 4200-30 and my hdmi/audio sync issues seem to be resolved.
Mine updated to that version a few days ago and it did not resolve the AC3 delay. I have to use the work around still of keeping the Direct Play setting off. Same is true for my Ultra that received an update as well.
I did a double check just now to be sure I wasn’t misremembering the update/situation.
I’m not so lucky, updated a couple days ago and no change for me.
Sidenote: Roku support has quit responding to me about this issue. I just sent TCL customer support a complaint about the latest Roku version, doubt if they can do much to help but it made feel better.
I did run into a subtitles issue where direct stream without direct play didn’t pick up forced subtitles … I had to manually enable the stream and then it was a bit dodgy but that might have been because of trying to get the subs to play right away and not allowing for transcoding to kick in.
I haven’t heard anything back from Roku either but contacting TCL (my manufacturer as well) might be a good idea - though I don’t know what role they play in the software side they at least might be able to present “our customers are complaining, fix it” to Roku.
I’m disappointed that there’s still no response from an official Plex account at least acknowledging the situation that impacts their user experience.
TCL’s response to me was essentially factory reset TV, install app, any further issue contact Roku’s customer support. TCL support seems a dead-end, was hoping as well they’d might apply pressure to Roku, but doubt the issue is going beyond front line support.
I have opened another support ticket (#2) with Roku, got a response. They start by saying could be a temporary issue with the channel provider, the normal remove and reinstall app, next if issue persists give supply them with the Roku TV versions and serial (standard first line support boilerplate stuff). I will respond with versions, etc.
I’m also having issues getting to the expert settings for the TV in the Android mobile app (these setting are used to calibrate the TV), again responses are uninstall/re-install app, TV, my network, etc.
