Some multichannel FLACs playback as stereo

[gunjan]

Hello!

First post here. I've been using Jellyfin for over a year now, and I absolutely love the application and the community around it.

Coming to the issue I am facing, I have two albums in multichannel FLAC. Album A is 5.1 channel 24 bit and 96 kHz. Album B is 5 channel 24 bit and 48 kHz. Both have been ripped from DVD sources (albeit different encoders). Album A plays back in 5.1 channel whereas Album B only plays back in stereo. When I look at the Jellyfin dashboard, for both albums it says that the device is compatible with the file and it is being received without modifications. When I look at the AV processor, for album A it says PCM audio 96 kHz 5.1 channel, whereas for album B it says Dolby Digital (DD+) audio 48 kHz 2 channels.

My setup:

• Jellyfin client - Amazon FireTV stick 4k Max (gen 1) - version Jellyfin Android 2.6.1
  
• Fire stick feeds an AV processor that I think should support playback (since album A works) - https://iotavx.com/IOTAVX-AVX17_1
  
• Jellyfin server 10.9.7 running on Debian inside an LXC on Proxmox (everything updated).
  

I tried to find the relevant log but there was nothing.

I found one issue on GitHub that might be related - https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-and...ssues/1755

Is there an issue in my setup or the audio files? Can I convert album B to a different format so that it plays back in multichannel?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[TheDreadPirate]

A similar issue was brought up in another thread.

https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-no-dolby-di...assthrough

But based on this reddit thread, FireOS is possibly the problem.

https://www.reddit.com/r/fireTV/comments...t/im9p7u9/

Sounds like you have to fiddle with some FireOS audio settings?

[gunjan]

Thanks for your reply TheDreadPirate. I looked into both threads, and tried changing playback options in FireOS, but my AV processor showed PCM 5.1 channel for album A irrespective of the setting and DD+ for album B. So that did not work.

I double-checked the audio preferences in Jellyfin, but those were all correct - direct audio output and passthrough for both Dolby and DTS audio.

After taking queue from you that something could be wrong with FireOS, I searched on the internet for other threads mentioning "multichannel FLAC FireTV". Some people had mentioned that using Jellyfin as a source for Kodi can be used for getting multichannel FLAC to work. So I decided to try it out. Installed Kodi. Installed the Jellycon add-on. Changed Kodi settings > system settings > audio to 7.1 channels. Lo and behold, album B plays in Dolby Audio (DD+) 5CH+LFE 48 kHz according to my AV processor (even though it is 4.1 which Kodi labels correctly) and I'm getting proper multichannel sound. According to the Jellyfin dashboard, the source file is entirely compatible with this client and the file is being received without modifications.

Then I tried to play album B through my network share, that also worked perfectly.

So it seems that something is wrong with Jellyfin.