Why no support for 5.1 surround music playback?

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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41

While there are problems with devices that limit plex’s options, if plex really cared about multichannel, they absolutely could make it work.

I don’t know much about shields, but I do know that Kodi is able to get multichannel to work rather reliably on shield devices. They’re always suggesting I should go that route rather than deal with the garbage fire stick devices.

For the firesticks - some of the devices can do multichannel with kodi, some can’t. So while there is some blame to place on amazon there, that will only get plex so far - as some devices can be made to work with multichannel as kodi has proven, and some can work in a compromised way, also done by kodi by having options to transcode audio to dolby digital. Not a way I’d want to do multi-channel - but at least there’s some sort of workaround that kodi has for those devices that can’t do anything else.

Plex absolutely can and should be doing more.

But - I can’t even get plex to recognize that a server that all my other equipment can see exists, let alone do multichannel, and support around here is unfriendly and unhelpful, so I’ve pretty much moved on to only using kodi, as plex is nothing but worthless trash coded by idiots.

42

This is where I got my Shield HRA support info from:
https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4410/~/how-do-i-play-high-resolution-audio-on-my-shield-tv%3F

43

I understand that what sounds simple sometimes is not, but I can’t wrap my head around this one.

I can take a M4A Atmos file, and change the extension to MP4 and play it as a “video”, and multi-channel works. I can take a high res flac multi-channel, put it in an MKV container, and it plays fine as a “video”. Plex just needs to pass-through the audio on the music library side. You mention a decoding issue, but if its pass-through, what is being decoded? Isn’t the AVR doing that?

44

I got that same article. That’s the one I referenced where it is talking about sources it will play back, but it doesn’t mention that it will not play them back at their original quality. It’s a little technicality that’s really annoying. And their support doesn’t seem to understand it, or at least not all of them.

And their developers denied that upgrading will even fix the issue, which is patently false unless they’ve forked Android so much that it doesn’t use the default android audio subsystems. But they were quick to blame Android for it.

Take a look here if you’re interested, but if you read that whole thread, not just the reply subthread (god I hate forums with subthreads), be prepared to be depressed. Literally all complaints are downvoted, legit or not. And yeah, I got really snarky in that thread, wont lie, but a bunch of posts have been deleted where I called them out even further for a lot of more stuff, primarily down-voting all the criticism, but I finally snapped and listed literally every controversy nVidia has been a part of in recent years (and there’s a lot of them), and then asked the simple question: “do you even care anymore, unless it’s about Jensen making obviously false remarks about ray tracing ‘just working’ or pulling video cards that you can’t even buy out of ovens?”

I’m not sure exactly which comment did it, maybe the one about Hardware Unboxed which is the only one I know of to go so viral as to make them do a retraction and an “apology” (which wasn’t actually an apology).

I thought the one in that where I gave them the link was deleted, but it wasn’t. I’ve got several emails with their support too going round and round on this.

But honestly, I got to the point where I was kind of intentionally getting banned because they were so rude to their customers and blaming their customers for a lot of stuff. Who wants to even interact or pay money to a company like that?

I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but I wont be buying any more nVidia products. That would be a bummer if I were going to buy a video card anytime soon, but you can’t buy a 3080 anyways so who the hell cares?

45

Perhaps I’m not understanding where the ‘work’ is being done to translate a multi-channel music file into multi-channel audio out.
Current Plex Music Library → Roku = 5.1
Current Plex Music Library → Shield = 2
Current Plex TV/Movie Libraries → Shield = 5.1
Same Music Files via VLC → Shield = 5.1

I’ve recently set up a second 5.1 room with a Roku, and Plex plays the 5.1 Music Library correctly.

Since the Shield does play the same files in 5.1 when using VLC as the app instead of Plex, it definitely seems that it should be something Plex can solve.

I’m happy to blame nVidia too if they can fix it too.

46

Oh, it’s kind of silly to be sure, but it’s because Android handles audio and video completely differently. Completely different subsystems. But I’m not 100% sure it’ll always work for all audio for video either. It will pass through audio to the hardware directly if it’s encoded in certain codecs, otherwise…

Also, remember that ATMOS is COMPLETELY different. It’s not exactly a pre-rendered audio format like your typical audio. It’s object based, so something has to know how to decode and output it to your system. Even most receivers wont know how to handle audio-only Atmos, especially since there’s not really a good supported audio-only format. Yeah, there’s M4A, but it’s not exactly the same as it’s native format (thd), which like nothing supports directly.

47

VLC uses a different decoder that bypasses the Android decoder.

Roku is on a completely different operating system. Yeah, both Android and Linux use the same Kernel (or a fork there-of) and I believe Roku is using their own forked Linux kernel as well, but the rest of the OSes are so different from standard Linux they’re hardly recognizable. In fact, Google was talking about replacing the Linux kernel with their own. I haven’t looked to see if they’ve completed this recently, but I doubt it as it would likely cause a huge upheaval in the Android ecosystem.

However, given that so many device manufacturers never update their devices with newer versions leaving millions stranded on older versions, maybe an upheaval is needed. But pretty sure we’d all have heard about it.

I also want to be very clear, yes, I do have a long and deep seeded thing about nVidia. Though, I thought I had moved past it until all the BS that happened this last year. I have a RTX 2080 that I spent enough time, effort, and money on to watercool and even try out multiple water cooling blocks. I have told many many people that while I’m a huge fan of AMD in the processor realm (due to Intel’s prices/arrogance and refusal to make a socket that will last more than one CPU generation), and used to feel the same way about their video cards and nVidia, I was ready to give all that up, buy a $800 nVidia GPU, $200 Shield TV Pro, and even at one point subscribe to their gamestream service (as a trial, it sucked so I canceled it, but still…), and had planned on upgrading to a 3090… And now I’m back off the nVidia train.

Just mentioning for transparency. But if you read the other thread here that I created all the way through, pretty sure you’ll come to the same conclusion about whose court the ball is currently in.

48

All frustrating crap all around. I reached a point where multiple times while fighting to try and get plex, or kodi, or my firestick, to do things that are simple to make a computer due, but the whole universe is conspiring against you from making a stupid stick or cube do, I would throw up my hands and exclaim “why can’t this work more like a computer?” And so I picked up a mini PC with hdmi out…and found out Denon receivers don’t like hdmi output from computers! Picked up a new Marantz amp that does dolby atmos - no problems with the mini PC. So the stick is pretty much just for throwing on quick crap like twitch and youtube - real playback is on the PC. I did still use plex regularly for throwing on a few shows on the bedroom TV on a Sunday night…but now plex can’t even communicate with my media server that EVERY OTHER PIECE OF EQUIPMENT in this house has no problems seeing and communicating with, so I’ve pretty much completely given up on plex. It is such garbage, and no one seems to be willing to do anything to help make it work.

50

Well, Nvidia may suck. Andorid may suck. Google might suck too… I dunno.
Kodi works. Because it knows how to decide the audio. But Plex isn’t working, and that’s a bug. Not a feature.

51

So if nvidia/PLEX is not the right combo to listen to HRA or 5.1, what can we use? I moved from a PC to a shield because I was tired of having to maintain the OS so I’m not going back. Apple TV? or maybe another app? VLC is working fine but I need a nice GUI. Too bad Plex is not letting us using an external player.
Is Plex on KODI still supported?

52

I tried a few players. I have a shield 2017.
vlc was playing multichannel but cut at 48khz. Kodi on Plex is not working anymore for audio. Kodi (v19) is working perfectly. all channels at full resolution.

53

Hi,

I am having the same issue : I would like to use plex to listen to some Flac 5.1 files on my ShieldTV 2019 + Onkyo TX-NR656. Plex for kodi v19 addon is not working anymore on music and Plex app for Android TV is sending only 2 channel (HDMI passthrough mode)… only VLC for Android TV is working.

54

yep it seems that Netflix guys are way smarter than VLC and Plex dev… sorry guys but it is true, Netflix works seamlessly (no settings or anything needed) with 5.1 amplifier via pass-through… VLC and Plex simply cannot understand a separate sound card like xonar that outputs spdif optical… it only sees HDMI and that’s it… sad really. the solution? either mack around with grey drivers o ruse a separate GPU which will only be seen as video out for HDMI and force Plex to find another sound device like the xonar… then I go tit to work but do we have to fork out $$$ to get a HD vid card just to watch movies??? Come on guys… I don’t want to have to buy a NUC either given how $$$ they also are… Make optical 5.1 option work ASAP and the world will be stable again…

55

I’m utterly shocked that Netflix, with a current market capitalization of $245.56 billion, is able to find more resources than VLC and Plex.

3 Likes
56

I have no problem with multichannel on video files (AC3, DTS, DTS HD, DD+, Atmos, True HD) witch is transmitted in HDMI passthrough to my AVR except for passthrough of DTS HRA witch is buggy.

=> here, only music (Flac 5.1 files) is missing multichannel output (downgraded to stereo PCM).

57

noob response… totally irrelevant… i will leave it at that…

58

I’ve got a large number of surround flac files stored on a NAS. I’ve a new Fire TV Stick 4K Ultra HD
plugged directly into the back of my Denon AVR6500H and use the Plex app on the fire stick to play the files. I don’t have any problem playing surround files which the avr detects and switches between stereo and surround automatically. I would like some indication, however, in the app, that the files I’m selecting are in surround!

59

I also have the same AVR. You should be able to either use the Info button on the AVR remote to show you what signal and channels it is accepting, or you can use the Denon AVR Remote app on your phone / tablet to also show you more info. In fact the mobile app will show you if it is receiving high bitrate audio, such as 96/24.

60

Thanks, that’s useful to know. I was thinking that, when choosing an album, the app might give an indication of it’s format, allowing you to play a surround album, rather than a stereo one. I suppose you could organise the libraries, but it would be a lot of work!

61

Hum… maybe the Fire TV does not use the same audio player than other Android TV boxes like the Nvidia Shield ? Because my AVR (Onkyo TX-NR656) is announcing PCM 2.0 24bits when playing a 5.1 Flac file from Plex app on Nvidia Shield TV box TV (direct play) whereas when using VLC on the same box, AVR is showing PCM 5.1 channels…