Apple TV no surround Sound

[Deldran]

Hello everyone,

I have been using Jellyfin for sometime, and I finally got surround sound setup on my apple TV.
So if I play John Wick Chapter for.  its a 4k 5.1 or 7.1 file.  I get no sound out of the rear speakers in my system.  If I play that same file on my Iphone and air play it to the apple TV I get surround sound.
Also if I play things through youtube or netflix that are surround sound from the apple tv in question I get surround sound.

When playing straight from the apple TV, Jellyfin reports that the client is fully compatible and is direct streaming it.  When playing from the Iphone it is transcoding it

I am happy to provide any info needed to help solve this issue, and any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Deleted User]

another problem with a 'web-dl'

i wonder if you would experience the same issue with a real blu-ray release with TrueHD Atmos instead of EAC3

who knows where that copy you have has been or what's been done to it

also, which apple tv

[TheDreadPirate]

"Direct Play" means nothing is transcoded. "Direct Stream" means the audio is being transcoded but video is not. Possibly to AAC stereo. Transcoding means the video is being transcoded, but possibly the audio as well. If you look in the server log directory, there should be a log with a name like "ffmpeg.directstream*" and "ffmpeg.transcode*". That should tell us how the audio was transcoded when direct streaming and transcoding.

This is just speculation since I don't have any Apple devices to test on, but when you are playing it directly from the Apple TV it may not be upmixing the stereo audio to play on the rest of the channels. Whether or not the phone is air playing ACTUAL surround sound or air play is upmixing stereo to all the channels is unknown.

Share your ffmpeg directstream and transcode logs with us so we can figure this out.

[Deldran]

Here are some logs from today.

Let me know if you need anything else.

It is an apple TV 4k

[TheDreadPirate]

For each of these log files, what device is playing which? Not that it makes much of a difference, which generation Apple TV 4k?

For the record, Apple TV's don't support DTS anything. 3 of the logs the DTS or Dolby Digital is being transcoded to 5.1 AAC. Your Apple TV should be playing that back as proper surround sound. The last one, for House of the Dragon - S01E02 is, already AAC stereo.

And Air Play does support casting surround sound. IMO, this might be a bug in the Apple TV client.

BTW, which jellyfin client are you using? Both on your phone and Apple TV.

[Deldran]

I believe it is a first gen Apple TV 4k.

I looked at them after I posted and noticed they did not have any of the stuff I had did earlier, someone must have been streaming from my system.

Ok tried to do this again.  On the Iphone I am using the Jellyfin client, on the apple TV I am using the swift fin client.  I just played the same track on both, and it only showed up in the transcode logs.  I did not see any of the other logs update their time stamps.

[TheDreadPirate]

Both are being transcoded in exactly the same way. This is definitely a client issue.

I don't have any Apple devices to test with. Are there any audio settings you can tinker with on the Apple TV Swiftfin client?

This might be an issue with the version of libVLC that is packaged with Swiftfin.

https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin/issues/723

[Deldran]

Ill give it a try with Infuse on the apple TV to see if the same issue happens

[Deldran]

Tried with Influx, and this worked, cannot seem to find it in the logs but I am getting audio on the rear speakers.

[TheDreadPirate]

Yeah, the server logs contain very little about the ins-and-outs of what the client is doing. It only logs interactions with the client. Start/stop, playback tracking, playback method. Not much else.