Hi everyone! I am having an issue where Plex on a Shield TV (2017) is using DirectPlay on video files with AAC 5.1 audio. However, my sound bar only supports Dolby Digital and DTS, so most of the audio channels are missing when playing movies with AAC 5.1 sound because the audio stream isn’t being transcoded.
Is there a way to force Plex to transcode audio? In my Shield TV’s surround sound settings I have it manually set to Dolby Digital only, so Plex seems to be ignoring that setting and thinking for some reason that my equipment supports AAC. I’ve tried changing every setting I can see, but none of them have made any difference.
Maybe for further info, other apps on the Shield work fine with the audio settings the way they are. Also, I have an HDMI splitter which is connected to my sound bar via optical. The splitter does support AC3, which I also know because sound works properly when I set my Xbox to Bitstream audio out. So I don’t think the issue is the splitter, nor the Shield itself because it is manually set to AC3.
In order to get sound when playing files in Plex that are encoded using AAC, I have to switch the splitter from 5.1 to 2.0 mode. Once I do this I am able to hear the audio normally, but it’s slightly annoying to have to do this. I guess I’m just at a loss for why Plex doesn’t seem to think it needs to transcode the audio tracks, and I haven’t seen any way on the Shield to force it to do so.
