My home studio has a Windows Plex player and as an HDMI pass-through to a Pioneer AVR surround FLAC formats work fine. Shows up on my AVR as PCM @ some Fs. Windows must be decoding the FLAC to a PCM output.
My home theatre is an NVidea Shield connected to an Denon AVR and it does not work via Plex; for some reason they do not pass-through for FLAC. Someone suggested Kodi works and with the Plex Plug-in then it should work too… its why I posted here.
Normally, bit streaming is required so that the encoded signal (DTS, AC3, DD, Atmos, etc) is untouched getting to an external decoder like in a an AVR or Soundbar.. If it simply left FLAC alone, my Denon AVR would decode multi-channel FLAC… but clearly Plex - and maybe Kodi too - are deciding NOT to passthrough. My AVR sees stereo. Why would the app decode something after you told it to pass it through? (BTW: I have yet to see an AVR misinterpret an incoming format… well at least with Pioneer, Denon and Sony. So it means my Shield is sending stereo.)
However this is not strictly a Shield problem. Other users are reporting Emby works fine on Shield. and even the Plex app on the LG OS works. See here: Multichannel FLAC and high resolution audio support for music in NVIDIA Shield Plex app - Feature Suggestions - Plex Forum
So its not a Sheild problem unless its on Plex - and apparently also Kodi.
Other users say they can do it on Apple TV: Retain playback of multichannel music files in the new Plex - Feature Suggestions - Plex Forum
