No Dialogue when playing 5.1 surround

[BajaSlap]

Perhaps this isn't the best place to post this so apologies if that's the case but I'm at a loss.

I have a TCL google TV hooked up to a Samsung Q600c through an eARC connection. For reference, it's a 3.1.2 Dolby Atmos soundbar. For some reason whenever I try to play any file that has 5.1 surround sound, the dialogue channel doesn't come through. I can hear sound effects and music just fine. This ONLY happens when using Jellyfin or a similar service to stream files over my network. If I take the same file and try to play it directly from a USB, no problem. If I stream it but route the audio through the TV speakers, it has no problem. Is there some setting that is necessary for downsampling 5.1 audio to 3.1?

[theguymadmax]

Are you experiencing issues with all formats (AC3, AAC, DTS, etc.)? Are the files being directly played or transcoded?

Make sure "Bitstream Dolby Digital Audio" is enabled in Preferences -> Playback -> Advanced Playback Preferences.

If it's already enabled, your only other audio option in the Jellyfin Android TV client is to downmix the audio to stereo. You can find this setting in Preferences -> Playback -> Audio Output.

[BajaSlap]

I managed to fix it - at least 95% of the way. A lot of this might have been an issue that doesn't have anything to do with Jellyfin but I have a couple reasons why I think it still might. Also, just in case someone else runs into the same problem maybe they will stumble across this.

After further testing I was running into the same issue no matter what format the file in. I uploaded a bunch of Dolby Digital speaker channel test videos and confirmed that it did not work with AC-3, E-AC, Atmos, DTS, DD, DD+, or AAC. I also tested STREAMING those same files through VLC, Kodi, and nova player. Kodi was the only player that was able to play through the center channel.

I also moved the same files over to a USB stick and tried to play them on those same players (besides Jellyfin) and had the same results. Additionally, I tried the built-in android media player and it was able to play the audio correctly as well. In all scenarios, if I was using optical audio out instead of eARC, all channels worked as expected.

THE FIX was to disable audio processing in the TV settings. Something was going wrong trying to passthrough the digital audio signal while the TV was also set to Auto audio processing. I still have some trouble with atmos 7.1 files (I get absolutely nothing out of the top-firing speakers or any channel that I don't have. With the optical cable, the Atmos speakers work and at some point the audio gets downsampled to the 3 channel that I currently have setup.

If every other video player was showing the same issue, I wouldn't have posted all this but the fact that Kodi player and the built in media player were able to play the files with the old settings and have no trouble with the DD+ and 7.1 Atmos files with the new settings seems to imply that there is some edge case that most video players for android/google TV overlook.