Hey,
I’m currently experiencing issues with my Plex setup playing 5.1 audio. Audio only comes out the front three speakers and subwoofer, neither of the back two speakers play audio.
I’m not sure if this is an issue with Plex or the speaker system but regardless of the audio is AAC or AC3, it doesn’t play through the back speakers.
Any help would be much appreciated!!
Information:
Arcam avr600v amplifier
Plex player version 3.011 (3.1.0)
Tizen: 2.4.0
Samsung Smart TV Plex app
Latest version of OSX Plex Media server with Plex pass
Could be a speaker thing. Have you confirmed non Plex devices play across all 5 speakers? Test a BluRay or DVD.
Or, hopefully your AMP has the ability to test.
Could also be the video files, SAY 5.1, but may not actually have all 5.1 channels in the audio…
How does the audio get from the TV/Plex to the receiver? HDMI-ARC? Toslink (optical)?
How is the Blu-ray player connected?
What model of Samsung TV?
Alternately, start with basic troubleshooting. Make sure everything works.
First, test the back speakers. Swap the front & back speaker wires on the receiver. Then play something - radio, CD, etc. Will let you know if the back speakers work. If no sound, you’ve some wiring & speakers to investigate.
Second, check the amp. Play a DVD or Blu-ray with 5.1 audio. Hear anything from rear speakers? If not, then the amp’s rear channels or its settings are suspect. Note: Assumes Blu-ray connected to AVR via HDMI. If Blu-ray connected to TV, then TV settings come into play.
Third, check the TV and Plex. This depends on how things are connected. Note that neither ARC or Toslink will carry lossless audio (dts-HD, TrueHD). Plex will transcode those to 5.1 or 2.0, depending on how your system is configured.
There are some channel test files you can use to help with the troubleshooting. They’re available from many places. Here’s some direct links to one site:
@MDSimpson said:
Could be a speaker thing. Have you confirmed non Plex devices play across all 5 speakers? Test a BluRay or DVD.
Or, hopefully your AMP has the ability to test.
Could also be the video files, SAY 5.1, but may not actually have all 5.1 channels in the audio…
Cheers for the reply! Yeah, so Bluray discs play through all speakers along with HD TV channels which play 5.1 movies etc. Netflix also works fine.
All the other TV shows and movies are in AAC and AC3 5.1 and I can get it to play via USB through all speakers on the Samsung connection hub thing, just not Plex unfortunately
@FordGuy61 said:
How are the components physically connected?
How does the audio get from the TV/Plex to the receiver? HDMI-ARC? Toslink (optical)?
How is the Blu-ray player connected?
What model of Samsung TV?
Alternately, start with basic troubleshooting. Make sure everything works.
First, test the back speakers. Swap the front & back speaker wires on the receiver. Then play something - radio, CD, etc. Will let you know if the back speakers work. If no sound, you’ve some wiring & speakers to investigate.
Second, check the amp. Play a DVD or Blu-ray with 5.1 audio. Hear anything from rear speakers? If not, then the amp’s rear channels or its settings are suspect. Note: Assumes Blu-ray connected to AVR via HDMI. If Blu-ray connected to TV, then TV settings come into play.
Third, check the TV and Plex. This depends on how things are connected. Note that neither ARC or Toslink will carry lossless audio (dts-HD, TrueHD). Plex will transcode those to 5.1 or 2.0, depending on how your system is configured.
There are some channel test files you can use to help with the troubleshooting. They’re available from many places. Here’s some direct links to one site:
There are many other demo/test videos on the site including HD, 3D & UHD.
So we have an optical output through the Samsung connection box, and then obviously to the amplifier.
TV model is found below:
The surround sound system plays 5.1 audio when I play off a USB portable HDD however not Plex even though the content is the same. Perhaps it is some transcoding setting on Plex?
Just tried some other media players over dlna (Emby and Kodi), and am experiencing the same issue with the 6 channel audio. I guess this narrows it down to the amplifier or the way my surround system handles it, however it doesn’t make sense that via a USB HDD it would work fine yet over dlna or a local server it doesn’t? Any ideas?
This may be a combination of Tizen and the Plex client.
See Samsung and 5.1 DTS playback thread. Samsung TV does not auto switch between DTS and AC3. This could be why you’re defaulting to 2.0 playback. You can work around it, but have to manually adjust TV audio settings each time you play a movie (or each time you play a movie when the audio differs from the previous movie).
FWIW, I see the same w/ my 2013 Samsung F7100. It doesn’t run Tizen and I thought Samsung would have fixed things by now, which is why I didn’t mention it. I got tired of messing with it and now use a Nvidia Shield TV as my Plex client. It bitstreams all Dolby & DTS audio formats to my Denon AVR, including lossless DTS-HD, DTS:X, TrueHD, & Atmos. Everything Direct Plays except for some VC-1 videos (video issue, nothing to do w/ audio).
FYI, PMS on Shield TV is not as mature as on Windows & other platforms. That said, if you do go for a Shield, suggest you get the Pro, w/ 500GB internal drive. Running PMS on 16GB Shield is problematic (the forum is full of comments/complaints, no need to rehash here). Getting the pro model will give you option to run PMS on Shield when things mature a bit.
This may be a combination of Tizen and the Plex client.
See Samsung and 5.1 DTS playback thread. Samsung TV does not auto switch between DTS and AC3. This could be why you’re defaulting to 2.0 playback. You can work around it, but have to manually adjust TV audio settings each time you play a movie (or each time you play a movie when the audio differs from the previous movie).
FWIW, I see the same w/ my 2013 Samsung F7100. It doesn’t run Tizen and I thought Samsung would have fixed things by now, which is why I didn’t mention it. I got tired of messing with it and now use a Nvidia Shield TV as my Plex client. It bitstreams all Dolby & DTS audio formats to my Denon AVR, including lossless DTS-HD, DTS:X, TrueHD, & Atmos. Everything Direct Plays except for some VC-1 videos (video issue, nothing to do w/ audio).
FYI, PMS on Shield TV is not as mature as on Windows & other platforms. That said, if you do go for a Shield, suggest you get the Pro, w/ 500GB internal drive. Running PMS on 16GB Shield is problematic (the forum is full of comments/complaints, no need to rehash here). Getting the pro model will give you option to run PMS on Shield when things mature a bit.
Will persue it under the new category! Cheers for the help
