TrueHD 7.1 outputs as stereo from Mac mini

Plex Players Desktop Players
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A couple of months ago I tossed aside my OpenPHT player and started using the Plex Media Player. Liked the new interface, and wanted the player on my Mac mini to be as close to the one on my Apple TV as possible.

But I can’t get the Plex Media Player on my Mac mini to output TrueHD 7.1 sound. I get stereo. On my Apple TV I get the 7.1 sound, so I started looking for an issue with my Mac mini. But everything looked fine there, so I tried my old OpenPHT player, and voila I got beautiful TrueHD 7.1 sound coming from my Mac mini.

So I guess the issue is with the Plex Media Player. I search around and found some threads suggesting to disable passthrough and stuff like that. But nothing helped. For me, at least.

Anyone else have this problem? Someone found a solution? Would love to go back to Plex’s official player again, but not as long as I don’t get any TrueHD 7.1 sound…

2

Sorry for asking the basic question:
Did you enable bitstreaming in PMP?

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Hm, where do I find this option? My audio settings look like this:

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4

You have already enabled it. It is called ‘Passthrough’.
AFAIK, Apple is preventing passthrough of “better” formats in MacOS, that’s why you don’t see e.g. DTS-HD appearing there.

OpenPHT had the ability to decode DTS-HD and stream it over HDMI as LPCM 5.1 to the amp. PMP cannot do this for … reasons.

5

OK, this is getting a bit technical… But does this mean that the sound I’m getting from OpenPHT isn’t TrueHD at all? But a decoded LPCM sound?

If yes, how do I get my movie to play the TrueHD sound? I tried VLC, but I saw on some other forums that VLC have similar issues with this (output stereo).

Sorry if these are stupid questions, but well… To learn I have to ask.

6

Yes, very likely. Unless your surround amplifier explicitly states the sound format as DTS on its display.

You can’t get TrueHD or anything above the most basic AC3 or DTS format out of a Macintosh. Apple is actively preventing this in the operating system.

7

First, thanks for clearing this up for me. Secondly, this is a bummer! Why would Apple do that?

One last question (I hope). The sound I get from Plex on my Apple TV. What is that? AC3, DTS, LPCM… or TrueHD? My Denon receiver doesn’t specify other than “multi channel”.

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Licensing costs. DTS even want a fee if you just bitstream it unchanged to a decoder.

I can’t tell you exactly because I don’t have such a device, but it should be in many cases the original sound format.
Apparently Apple does not prevent bitstreaming DTS-HD on their ATV devices.
Please ask in here for details: https://forums.plex.tv/tags/c/plex-players/streaming-devices/apple-tv

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