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Is the Android TV app only DD 2.0?


DeanoDublin

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DeanoDublin

I’ve got a new Sony A8 Android TV and am trying to get the Emby app sorted on it. It’s connected to my home cinema amp. 
 

I’m only getting DD 2.0 for anything I play. Is this expected? Prime Video on the TV works perfectly- 5.1. If I test via my NUC (Emby server) connected to the amp audio is 5.1. 
 

Couldn’t find any settings to play with 😞

Edited by DeanoDublin
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Hi.  You couldn't find the Audio settings in the app?  Where did you look?

Exactly how is everything connected and what content are you playing?

The app supports whatever audio your system does.

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raven-au
8 hours ago, DeanoDublin said:

I’ve got a new Sony A8 Android TV and am trying to get the Emby app sorted on it. It’s connected to my home cinema amp. 
I’m only getting DD 2.0 for anything I play. Is this expected? Prime Video on the TV works perfectly- 5.1. If I test via my NUC (Emby server) connected to the amp audio is 5.1.

Are you sure your amp is getting Dolby Digital and not plain stereo?

I have several Sony TVs and they all get stereo for multi-channel audio.

It turns out that I have been using the Andriod TV beta app by mistake for quite a while and there is an option to send Dolby Digital for unknown audio so I at least can get 5.1 if I play shows on the TVs.

Also, last time I looked, those models didn't have eARC yet but the models I looked at might have been oldish.

And even if they did have eARC that doesn't help since I have found the TV apps won't pass anything other than two channel audio, only external devices plugged into the TV will pass the multi-channel audio through the eARC connection.

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13 hours ago, raven-au said:

since I have found the TV apps won't pass anything other than two channel audio

That isn't true.  I can send DD to a soundbar (or whatever) from the Android TV app running on a Sony TV just fine.

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deanDemo
On 11/01/2021 at 17:07, ebr said:

Hi.  You couldn't find the Audio settings in the app?  Where did you look?

Exactly how is everything connected and what content are you playing?

The app supports whatever audio your system does.

TV - Sony A8OLED. Receiver - Sony STR-DN1040. Speakers: Monitor Audio 5.1 set. Audio output from TV to receiver is via optical.

TV running Emby Android app (1.5.54g). Looked in the Sub/Audio Defaults, nothing there. Looked in Playback and the only option there looks like Audio Output which is set to Auto.

All files are high quality rips with a mix of different surround sounds - from DD5.1, to DD Atmos, to DTS. The receiver shows the audio input as Dolby Digital 2.0 (and not DD 3/2.1 or Dolby TrueHD 7.1, ect.). I've attached a random one for info.

Audio from the Prime Video app on the TV comes through perfectly which is why I'm asking if it is expected behaviour that the Emby app is only sending on stereo?

Altered Carbon.txt

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deanDemo
17 hours ago, raven-au said:

Are you sure your amp is getting Dolby Digital and not plain stereo?

I have several Sony TVs and they all get stereo for multi-channel audio.

It turns out that I have been using the Andriod TV beta app by mistake for quite a while and there is an option to send Dolby Digital for unknown audio so I at least can get 5.1 if I play shows on the TVs.

Also, last time I looked, those models didn't have eARC yet but the models I looked at might have been oldish.

And even if they did have eARC that doesn't help since I have found the TV apps won't pass anything other than two channel audio, only external devices plugged into the TV will pass the multi-channel audio through the eARC connection.

It's definitely coming up as "Dolby Digital 2/0" - the receiver shows a preview of what it is getting when you start watching something. Mine is brand new but I'm not using eARC. The amp does have an ARC input but I couldn't seem to get it working. I'm fine with optical though and my thinking was that if it is ok for Prime Video then it should be fine for Emby 🤷‍♂️

If I play the same file using Emby Theater on my NUC then it is perfect, so like you it's definitely not the file.

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CBers
38 minutes ago, deanDemo said:

TV running Emby Android app (1.5.54g) 

Are you sure that's the correct version, as that is very old, or is there a typo? Latest Stable release is v1.8.54.

If you are correct, then try and update to the latest release version, or consider side-loading the beta version (v1.8.67).

 

Edited by CBers
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DeanoDublin
2 minutes ago, CBers said:

Are you sure that's the correct version, as that is very old, or is there a typo? Latest Stable release is v1.8.54.

If you are correct, then try and update to the latest release version, or consider side-loading the beta version (v1.8.67).

 

Apologies, yes typo!! Running 1.8.5g

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If you are getting Dolby 2.0 I suspect your TV is converting it because we would pretty much never convert to that.  Can you check the audio settings on the TV?

Optical is also a wrinkle.  Can you not hook it up via HDMI?

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raven-au
18 hours ago, ebr said:

That isn't true.  I can send DD to a soundbar (or whatever) from the Android TV app running on a Sony TV just fine.

Oh, was I not clear about what I meant, sorry.

 

A Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital Plus (possibly needs to be enabled in the TV settings) sound track of course does get passed through just fine.

What I meant to say is other (unsupported) HD audio doesn't appear to be converted to Dolby Digital, it ends up as stereo at the receiver or soundbar.

I thought that was what the OP was talking about but now I re-read the thread that's not actually what was said.

But I also have to say I haven't exhaustively tested this so my general statement could be, at least, inaccurate.

In the past I've also said that the Sony TVs won't pass anything greater than 448k but that appears to have changed now too ... I seem to be able to use 640k tracks now.

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raven-au
14 hours ago, deanDemo said:

TV - Sony A8OLED. Receiver - Sony STR-DN1040. Speakers: Monitor Audio 5.1 set. Audio output from TV to receiver is via optical.

TV running Emby Android app (1.5.54g). Looked in the Sub/Audio Defaults, nothing there. Looked in Playback and the only option there looks like Audio Output which is set to Auto.

All files are high quality rips with a mix of different surround sounds - from DD5.1, to DD Atmos, to DTS. The receiver shows the audio input as Dolby Digital 2.0 (and not DD 3/2.1 or Dolby TrueHD 7.1, ect.). I've attached a random one for info.

I don't have any A8 models, they are a few models above what I have.

Shouldn't you have Audio Output options of auto1, auto2 and PCM?

And just below that a menu entry of Dolby Digital Plus to enable DD+.

But there appear to be words about DD+ only being sent over ARC, not sure since I haven't used optical for a very long time.

The Sony ARC/eARC implementation is quite good IMHO, I recommend you try again to get that to work.

That Sony amp should work fine with ARC or eARC if your TV supports it.

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raven-au

That Altered Carbon show you mentioned should work just fine over ARC.

I just tried a show that I have that has pretty much an identical sound track to the Altered Carbon track and it came up as DD Atmos on my Denon receiver via. ARC.

Maybe the problem really is using an optical connection.

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raven-au
2 hours ago, raven-au said:

That Altered Carbon show you mentioned should work just fine over ARC.

I just tried a show that I have that has pretty much an identical sound track to the Altered Carbon track and it came up as DD Atmos on my Denon receiver via. ARC.

Actually, from on-line specs for your receiver I see it doesn't support Atmos so I don't know what would happen in your case.

It's likely it would be considered unknown audio, like TrueHD, TrueHD Atmos, DTS-HD and DTS:X are, and your receiver will receive 2 channels of audio, essentially stereo.

I don't have anything with a plain DTS track so I can't check what happens with it.

That's what I get with the TV when the Emby option to send Dolby Digital for unknown audio is not set.

Edited by raven-au
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DeanoDublin
8 hours ago, raven-au said:

I don't have any A8 models, they are a few models above what I have.

Shouldn't you have Audio Output options of auto1, auto2 and PCM?

And just below that a menu entry of Dolby Digital Plus to enable DD+.

But there appear to be words about DD+ only being sent over ARC, not sure since I haven't used optical for a very long time.

The Sony ARC/eARC implementation is quite good IMHO, I recommend you try again to get that to work.

That Sony amp should work fine with ARC or eARC if your TV supports it.

That’s pretty much the exact same menu options now so they haven’t changed too much. 

I’ll go and look at it again. I figured that maybe the receiver was a bit old and that’s why I couldn’t get the eARC output to work with it, even though one of the receiver HDMI outputs is labelled as ARC. 

I just found it strange that Prime was giving perfect surround via optical but Emby wasn’t, hence my initial assumption. 

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DeanoDublin
5 hours ago, raven-au said:

Actually, from on-line specs for your receiver I see it doesn't support Atmos so I don't know what would happen in your case.

It's likely it would be considered unknown audio, like TrueHD, TrueHD Atmos, DTS-HD and DTS:X are, and your receiver will receive 2 channels of audio, essentially stereo.

I don't have anything with a plain DTS track so I can't check what happens with it.

That's what I get with the TV when the Emby option to send Dolby Digital for unknown audio is not set.

That’s file was just an example - I just wanted to show that I was using ‘proper’ files. Most TV stuff would be DD5.1 640bps. 

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1 hour ago, DeanoDublin said:

even though one of the receiver HDMI outputs is labelled as ARC. 

You are definitely going to get better results using HDMI but, if you are coming from a TV as the source of all the content, then you could hook the TVs ARC channel to any input on your receiver.  If you use devices directly connected to the receiver that need to display on the TV, then you would need that bilateral output.

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raven-au
6 hours ago, DeanoDublin said:

I just found it strange that Prime was giving perfect surround via optical but Emby wasn’t, hence my initial assumption. 

It looks to me like Prime Video mostly has shows that are stereo or 5.1 but I haven't looked widely at this.

It will send DD+ 5.1 for the 5.1 shows which should work fine with your setup including with Emby if your shows have a DD+ track (although Atmos might get in the way).

Unfortunately eARC doesn't help with TV apps, Sony doesn't seem willing to allow audio that has more than two actual channels to be sent from applications although some may use tricks to do so.

I have seen that a plain ARC connection to a receiver will pass up to DD+ 7.1 (since it is send over two actual channels) on one of my ARC only TVs.

It may be that I can use DD @ 640k now (it used to be a maximum of 448k) because DD+ up to 7.1 channels needs the higher bit rate and Sony/Android TV allow it because of streaming apps like Netflix.

Edited by raven-au
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raven-au
6 hours ago, DeanoDublin said:

That’s file was just an example - I just wanted to show that I was using ‘proper’ files. Most TV stuff would be DD5.1 640bps. 

Most encoded shows you see around the place use DD @ 448k, so I suspect the limitation I have seen in the past is not restricted to Sony TVs and is well known.

So keep an eye out on your journeys, this may be a factor in playback.

Edited by raven-au
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13 hours ago, raven-au said:

shows which should work fine with your setup including with Emby if your shows have a DD+ track

DD+ isn't supported on optical I don't think.  Again, the real answer here is going to be to use HDMI.

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deanDemo
14 hours ago, raven-au said:

Most encoded shows you see around the place use DD @ 448k, so I suspect the limitation I have seen in the past is not restricted to Sony TVs and is well known.

So keep an eye out on your journeys, this may be a factor in playback.

Honestly, I see 640 the majority of the time. Just a random example - 

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : E-AC-3
Format/Info                              : Enhanced AC-3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital Plus
Codec ID                                 : A_EAC3
Duration                                 : 21 min 32 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 640 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 98.6 MiB (6%)
Language                                 : English
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

I understand what you mean though and it shouldn't really make a difference 👍

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deanDemo

Thanks for the input guys. I'm going to try and get it working over HDMI which is simply not happening at the moment. I just hope that it doesn't me a new receiver is necessary!!

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raven-au
8 hours ago, deanDemo said:

Thanks for the input guys. I'm going to try and get it working over HDMI which is simply not happening at the moment. I just hope that it doesn't me a new receiver is necessary!!

That receiver supports ARC, and so does the TV, and I've found the Sony implementation quite good, it should be fine and it should be fairly straight forward.

You should be able to connect a cable from the receiver ARC port to the TV ARC port (usually labeled) and check both devices have ARC enabled.

On the TV that will is probably be under "Watching TV -> External Inputs -> BRAVIA Sync Settings".

I'm not sure where it will be on the receiver but your likely to see BRAVIA there somewhere too (since that's what Sony calls it), and since it's related to HDMI it could be in a menu area with that in it's name as well.

 

Oh, it's also worth remembering that there are limitations on the number of each type of device on the ARC bus.

Obviously one TV only, the problem can come up as too many player devices without warning, the limit is three, above that and CEC looses it's mind.

I don't know if those limits have changed in the eARC specification.

 

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raven-au

One more thing.

Don't be too hasty to update equipment so you can get eARC.

If it's clear there is specific functionality you want then sure but that isn't likely to be to improve the audio passthrough for TV apps since they have similar restrictions to plain ARC, even on eARC enabled devices.

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jrwalte

If you do decide to upgrade, best (least issue, easiest setup) is to have all devices go to receiver then receiver to TV and get rid of ARC or eARC. For this reason alone I don't use my SmartTV app and connect a Shield to my receiver instead. It responds much faster and I know it will support all audio codecs.

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raven-au
5 hours ago, jrwalte said:

If you do decide to upgrade, best (least issue, easiest setup) is to have all devices go to receiver then receiver to TV and get rid of ARC or eARC. For this reason alone I don't use my SmartTV app and connect a Shield to my receiver instead. It responds much faster and I know it will support all audio codecs.

That's right, the Shield TV is expensive but not even close to the cost of a TV so it's a great addition if you like your TV viewing and have a range of video and audio codecs you want to be able to play.

Be a little careful though, the 2019 Shield TV tube version is light on resources (2GB RAM, 32-bit Android TV build) and can have problems.

Emby works better than I expected with it though but you need to be careful, for example my Emby server is on a QNAP NAS and I can make playback quite unstable by doing something that generates quite a bit of IO. But, sometimes even the 2019 Shield Pro (3GB RAM, 64-bit Android TV build) can be affected by that, nevertheless the tube is more sensitive to external influences and high bit rate movies, and so on, than the Pro version.

If you can pick up a 2017 Shield TV cheaply they work well too although they don't have Dolby Vision support like to 2019 devices.

Can't say about the earlier versions as I haven't owned any but they apparently also work well.

Connecting via the receiver is often less problematic and works well but if you have a TV that supports eARC and it's connected to a receiver or soundbar that also supports eARC you can pass all the audio through the TV (at least this works with my Sony eARC TV). So that's an option if you don't have enough input ports (like some/most soundbars).

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