Shield: Videos with AAC audio suddenly have very low volume

[divide_by_zero 7]

Hi Emby Team,

 

New issue just in the past 2 days; haven't seen anyone post this, so hope I'm not the only one. Media with AAC audio plays at *extremely* low volume. Typically when playing back most media through emby or netflix, my Yamaha AVR volume is at about -30db. In the past couple days, I now need to set volume for AAC files at about +10db just to have it audible, and with lots of hiss FWIW. (This 40db louder -- I have never, ever had to set my volume this high, and for typical playback, this would probably blow out my speakers.)

 

Some quick tests do seem to isolate this to AAC. DD/AC3 files play back at their typical volumes through emby, as does Netflix. But testing 3x AAC files all produces the extremely low volume issue. Server indicates Direct Play. (And FWIW, testing w/ Emby Theater on a Windows PC does not have the issue.)

 

Given that 3.2.70 server was just released in the past 10 days and things had worked fine before that, I'm guessing it's some sort of bad library update/regression or some weird change to the Shield profile, but hoping the experts can confirm and fix.

Shield Client 1.5.32.g

Server 3.2.70

[ebr 14929]

Did you say you are also experiencing this in the Netflix app?

[divide_by_zero 7]

Thanks @@ebr ! But no, Netflix is not affected. (AFAIK they don't use AAC.)

 

Issue is confirmed to only happen on Emby client while playing back AAC files on Shield. (e.g; Emby Theater on test Win10 box doesn't have the audio issue w/ same AAC files, Emby on Shield plays back DD/DTS files fine, and Netflix / AMZ Prime videos on Shield playback fine.)

[ebr 14929]

Okay, then we'll have to look at an example so we can see exactly how these are playing.

 

Thanks.

 

How to Report a Problem

[MEB 26]

I second this issue, I never looked into the type of videos it was happening to but I noticed it wasn't all videos, i'll check the vid next time I have one with this issue to. I had to crank my sound system almost to max to be able to hear some though.

[ebr 14929]

I'm not sure what this could possibly be.

 

I just tested a couple of videos with AAC 5.1 and they were fine.

[Luke 37112]

We need to see the information requested in post #4. Thanks guys.

[divide_by_zero 7]

Thanks @@ebr & @@Luke ,

 

Finally had time to collect the requested data last night, but wanted to isolate behavior further. Turns out, it's a Shield issue, not an Emby issue. (I put an AAC file on a flash drive and played locally through native Shield video app -- same volume issue.)

 

@@MEB , I found an unexpected fix; hopefully it'll work for you as well. When the issue first happened, I futzed with a few of the Shield audio settings even though I'd never changed them since initial setup and they had been working fine. But no joy. Went back to these settings last night after confirming that it's not an Emby issue. What seemed to un-bork things was enabling the setting to send all audio output at a constant level. This disabled CEC/IR functionality on the Shield. I went back and re-enabled CEC, and bam -- problem solved. I could tell this fixed immediately because Shield navigation sounds immediately got much louder. (I changed several things that didn't seem to help, but can't be sure if they had any impact; so if the above doesn't fix, try toggling any/all audio settings to whatever they aren't currently set to and see if that helps.)