the sound is very soft

[TeunFeun]

I have installed Jellyfin, but when I stream a movie from my desktop server of Jellyfin to the client on my Android TV app, the sound is very soft via HDMI earc to my soundbar, the volume of the soundbar has to be very high, is there a solution for this? ?

[TheDreadPirate]

Depends. If the audio is being directly played (no audio transcoding) there isn't much you can do. Movie audio is mastered very differently from Youtube or even TV show audio. If your audio is transcoding there is a setting in Dashboard > Playback to increase the volume of the audio. But only if the audio is transcoding.

[Tim]

Usually when audio is down-mixed, aside from reducing the tracks, it also loses a lot of volume. Perhaps the audio is down-mixed without there being a gain applied to it. Like @TheDreadPirate mentioned, you can apply the gain on Jellyfin's side only when Jellyfin transcodes, but if it direct plays, another option would be to increase the volume yourself in the source file. This can be done by encoding and down-mixing (if that was the issue) the audio track again. When I down-mix an audio track (i.e., 5.1 -> stereo), I tend to apply a gain of at minimum 2 to the track when encoding it.

What i said only applies if it is actually down-mixing, which could very well not be the issue here.

[ivan]

I have the exact same problem

I'm pretty sure my content is being played directly, since Jellyfin client is running on an Android TV OS device (Mi box S 2nd gen). My audio setup is pretty basic, it's just the built-in speakers from the TV. I know the speakers are fine because watching regular TV works well (it sounds OK).

But with the Mi box and Jellyfin, a lot of the content (not all of it) plays very very quiet.

I wish there was a way to boost the sound in Jellyfin.

[ivan]

Hey there

When I down-mix an audio track (i.e., 5.1 -> stereo), I tend to apply a gain of at minimum 2 to the track when encoding it.

What is the best way to downmix from 5.1 to stereo?

What i said only applies if it is actually down-mixing, which could very well not be the issue here.

How can one know for sure where the issue is ?

[Ereb_Zx]

I have a similar issue on WebOS sine 10.9 update. Sound becomes very soft and quiet, compared to playing the same file from the usb port using built in player. Happened with different files, direct playing or remuxing without transcoding. What has helped me was uninstalling the client and downloading it again from LG Store, but the issue returned a week later. Maybe try reinstalling the Android client as well see if that helps.

[ivan]

I was on 10.8.x and have updated to 10.9.6 and I feel like it has improved my situation a little bit! It's not perfect but it's something.

I saw that the release notes (from 10.9.0 onwards) mention improvements on audio downmixing.
Release notes can be read at https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/releases

I'm glad they did these improvements and I hope they keep working on this!

[ivan]

I have installed Jellyfin, but when I stream a movie from my desktop server of Jellyfin to the client on my Android TV app, the sound is very soft via HDMI earc to my soundbar, the volume of the soundbar has to be very high, is there a solution for this? ?

I have an update that you will like! (in case you're still experiencing this issue)

There was no issue with the content nor with Jellyfin server nor with Jellyfin app.

I realized it had to be something with the Android TV device because I noticed that content being played on the Youtube app was also suffering from low volume.

Upon further research, I read that there's a bug on Android 12.

The solution that people are following is to disable HDMI-CEC but in my case, what worked was:
In the Android TV device, Go to Settings > Remote controller and reset it.
At this point the Android TV remote no longer controls the TV.
And by being able to set the volume level on the Android TV, you will be able to see how it is set. I found it was at around 50% which was never enough. Putting it on 100% fixed the problem!

Now I leave it as is and adjust the sound volume using my TV's remote, when needed.