Hi,
I’m running the latest PMS for MacOS on the latest Plex app for AppleTV (AppleTV 4K 2021 - version numbers below). Something unusual is happening with audio playback. I’m watching a classic movie with an AAC mono audio track. We’re using a Sonos BeamG2 with rear surrounds connected to ARC port on our TV.
However, instead of the audio showing up in the Sonos app as mono, it’s showing the audio being passed through to Sonos as Dolby Digital 5.1. This sounds like it would either be good or wouldn’t matter, but in fact, it does. Because it’s mono, it’s only playing a single channel. If the audio passed through to Sonos is mono, Sonos will route it to all the speakers in an intelligent way. It’s not exactly true “surround” sound, but it’s decent (and Sonos does a good job with it). However, when it sees it as 5.1 (even though it’s mono), Sonos is setup to play the audio only through the speakers that the channel is assigned to. Since it’s actually mono, the only channel that’s routed anywhere is the single mono to the center channel which means that Sonos won’t even use all the Beam speakers/drivers (let alone the rear surrounds).
This is entirely perplexing. Usually, mono is played through the Sonos system (and shows in the app) as mono. Plex is direct playing not transcoding so it shouldn’t be an issue with that. I did try transcoding just as an experiment (which didn’t make any change) and I also tried switching to the old player (also no difference). I played it via Emby just to see how it would handle it and it played in stereo PCM (which did use all speakers). So, somehow it is Plex that’s switching the audio from AAC mono to DD 5.1.
Any ideas? It really diminishes the enjoyment of the movie overall when the audio is only coming through a single driver on the soundbar. Thanks in advance!
Server Version#: Version 1.31.3.6819
Player Version#: 8.16 (5285)
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