Roku, Plex and TrueHD Audio

[DQ]

Anyone had any success getting a Roku to passthrough TureHD audio? I notice that my Plex box is transcoding "TrueHD7.1" to "EAC3 7.1". I assume this is the Roku where Plex is running governing this in spite of me having a fully functional receiver. I found multiple posts claiming the Roku (even the Ultra) was simply not capable of TrueHD. But that's just normal folks saying that and since I have access to a large pool of uber media nerds I thought I would ask.

Thanks

 

[DQ]

No one replied so I assume this is not something others are interested in but I will drop some info here after a ton of research in case it helps someone else. And for the record what I am doing here is playing lossless UHD movies (that being 4k movies ripped from UHD discs without transcoding down) on Plex on a Roku Ultra.

This is the long and the short of it.

- Roku (even in passthrough mode) does not support any lossless audio formats such as TrueHD (hence the transcoding on the audio)
- The newest and most powerful FireTV does not support TrueHD either but does support more formats than the Roku but of course you are locked into the Amazon environment.
- The Nvidia Shield does support more audio formats and does support TrueHD. But it has not had a hardware refresh in some time and only has a HDMI 2.0b port. It's also twice the price of the other devices and uses the Google environment as it's an Android device.
- AppleTV does not support it either. And frankly, even if it did, I don't hate myself that much.

Ultimately, these devices are all made for streaming from the typical providers and tend to align their specs and formats for what those services support. So none that I have found are really geared to push 150mbs 4k streams over you Wifi. My Roku does it minus the TrueHD and I have a feeling it's gritting it's teeth to even pull that off.

 

[robv14001]

I had similar-sounding problems, but the cause was software that required a HDCP 2.2 connection to send TrueHD, etc. The ultimate solution was an AVR that supported HDCP 2.2. My setup ORIGINALLY was: Windows 7 older PLEX server ==> NVIDIA SHIELD older PLEX client ==> older Denon HDCP 2.0 AVR ==> SONY HDCP 2.2 TV. Switching to a newer Denon HDCP 2.2 AVR eliminated the transcoding problem.

(At one point, an update to SHIELD seemed to add the feature to override HDCP negotiations and allow the user to select which sound formats to send. I could never get this new feature to work with the older Denon 2.0 AVR, which is working perfectly for all other devices and all compressed and lossless audio inputs to this day. Both Denon AVRs play their HDMI audio inputs perfectly. It was sending the HDMI signal that had the problem. And that problem seemed to be related to HDCP 2.0 vs. HDCP 2.2.)

 

[cartman0208]

Damn, now you set me up to go buy a soundbar just to see if plex can handle the passthrough ...
Until now I was fine using only the TV as Plex client

 

[DQ]

Damn, now you set me up to go buy a soundbar just to see if plex can handle the passthrough ...
Until now I was fine using only the TV as Plex client

It can passthrough a number of formats but TrueHD or anything uncompressed it cannot. Seems only the shield can but then you run into other issues. The transcoding plex is doing to EAC37.1 sounds pretty good overall. I rather deal with that then a 4 year old Android device that is expensive and seemingly losing the attention of it's makers.

 

[coopervid]

You guys should get an Oppo Clone and then forget about your issues you like to deal with.

 

[DQ]

You guys should get an Oppo Clone and then forget about your issues you like to deal with.

No one said they liked dealing with it but clearly gillions of people use all sorts of other devices. Isn't Oppo a device for discs? I was never talking about a physical disc.

 

[coopervid]

No one said they liked dealing with it but clearly gillions of people use all sorts of other devices. Isn't Oppo a device for discs? I was never talking about a physical disc.

Nah. Oppo Clone is a media player w/o a drive for discs. Best player for media. Just can't do MKV 7 or 8 DoVi files. They need to be converted since this Oppo firmware dates from times when Oppo left the business.

 

[DQ]

Nah. Oppo Clone is a media player w/o a drive for discs. Best player for media. Just can't do MKV 7 or 8 DoVi files. They need to be converted since this Oppo firmware dates from times when Oppo left the business.

That whole thing about them being out of business, old firmware and what I assume is a silly high cost relatively speaking, personally chases me away from that. I would not buy an Nvidia Shield due to similar yet less egregious issues and they still make that so no way I would go that route. I myself am happy with a $100 Roku that handles nearly anything without the expense and all the fuss.

 

[cartman0208]

According to this

What media formats are supported on Smart TVs?

General Media Support Tip!: This article is about our Smart TV app. It does not apply to the Plex app...

support.plex.tv

Does the app support audio passthrough?​

Yes. Plex will present video streams with multi-channel audio to the television as-is. It’s up to the television to handle the audio from there. If you experience issues, you may find success enabling digital (bitstream) audio output from your television to your receiver via ARC.

...my Samsung TV should be able to passthrough ... since I have no real device to pass it through, my thought was to get a soundbar.

Regarding Oppo ... I don't want any additional devices ... If the soundsystem just works seamlessly with the TV (meaning turning on and off with it) without any other remotes or buttons, I'm fine with it.

 

[DQ]

According to this

What media formats are supported on Smart TVs?

General Media Support Tip!: This article is about our Smart TV app. It does not apply to the Plex app...

support.plex.tv

...my Samsung TV should be able to passthrough ... since I have no real device to pass it through, my thought was to get a soundbar.

Regarding Oppo ... I don't want any additional devices ... If the soundsystem just works seamlessly with the TV (meaning turning on and off with it) without any other remotes or buttons, I'm fine with it.

I don't think that is going to work how you think it will as it will still depend on the source and the hardware it passes through. I could be wrong but I doubt your TV will handle many formats. For example, I am running Plex on a Roku. Plex is capable of the passthrough but the Roku is not.

 

[cartman0208]

M TV can't handle many formats ... not even DTS, found that out long ago.
That's why my hopes are: It doesn't need to ... it just needs to pass audio through to the Soundbar.

 

[DQ]

M TV can't handle many formats ... not even DTS, found that out long ago.
That's why my hopes are: It doesn't need to ... it just needs to pass audio through to the Soundbar.

Again, I don't think it's that simple. My Roku is on passthrough as well. However it still cannot handle the higher tier formats. The theory there goes Netflix or Amazon Prime or whomever would never use uncompressed audio just due to the bandwidth usage so the device was never designed for it. This seems to be the case with all of the streaming boxes minus the Nvidia Shield but the knocks against it is the hardware is old (2019), it's Android and it appears that Nvidia does not care about it since Cloud Gaming is not taking off.

 

[cartman0208]

We will never know until I try

 

[cartman0208]

Well, got my Soundbar now ... well not the one I ordered, but the 2 generations advanced one
Shame on amazon

But yes, everything gets transcoded to EAC3 ... since my TV does not support DTS, even that too.

 

[DQ]

Well, got my Soundbar now ... well not the one I ordered, but the 2 generations advanced one
Shame on amazon

But yes, everything gets transcoded to EAC3 ... since my TV does not support DTS, even that too.

Yeah that's what I was afraid of. Most things just don't support the high bandwidth audio codecs and I suspect it's because the streaming platforms don't. They probably have good reason for that but it is what it is.

 

[cartman0208]

I guess if the audio system was able to run the plex app, there would be no such issue...

 

[DQ]

I guess if the audio system was able to run the plex app, there would be no such issue...

Actually that's a good question. I am not certain Plex handles those codecs either but I have assumed that it does. The problem to this point has been the hardware we run Plex on does not. None I can find with the exception of the Nvidia Shield. But given what I have seen about that platform it is not advisable to get into it at this point.

 

[cartman0208]

So what about a HTPC?
According to the (rather old) Plex app I'm running on my Windows machine, the audio codec seems correct and is on direct play ... now how to put it to the sound system?

 

[DQ]

So what about a HTPC?
According to the (rather old) Plex app I'm running on my Windows machine, the audio codec seems correct and is on direct play ... now how to put it to the sound system?
View attachment 74068

The only way you get full "use" of that is if you send that to a sound system that understands it and can play it as is. Which typically in my experience would be a capable audio receiver that is using most or all of the channels the stream provides. If you just send that to something that does not understand it, transcodes it itself or cannot play it through 6 or 7 channels then you have not accomplished anything in my opinion.