Windows app Atmos TrueHD passthrough audio stuttering and interruption

[jjstecchino 8]

Hello, I just reinstalled my media center pc with fresh windows 11. I had to reinstall Emby client app from the windows store as the old installer I was familiar with doesnt appear to be available anymore. In the old pc with an old processor and much older video card I was able to passthrough all DD (including Atmos TrueHD) and DTS bitstreams without issues and perfect audio. With the new app up to E-AC3 is ok but any HD bitstream like DD TrueHD or DTS-X stutters like hell and then the audio stop working altogether. In the Audio Options of the Video Player, I set NVIDIA High Def Audio and audio passthrough enabled for ac3, eac3, dts, dns-hd, truehd. Am I doing anything wrong? are there any other setting I need to change? I tried exclusive audio mode but it dent make any difference. I have been using emby since its windows-mce edition and this is the worse it has ever worked for me. Most of my content is from blurry and I have saved the best track which is in truhd and it is now unwatchable.

 

Any suggestion on how to fix this highly appreciated.

[Mahinepua 81]

Is TrueHD the only issue or all bitstreaming?

The current windows app and previous legacy app will have random dropouts and on seek with Truehd streams. It can only be fixed by swapping embys mpv.dll with a custom build. 

Try unchecking TrueHD bitstreaming and see if the issue persists with PCM output.

Edited January 29 by Mahinepua

[jjstecchino 8]

Hi, ac3, eac3, dts passthrough bitstreams all work ok. DTS-HD and TrueHD passthrough hiccups and stops. I was reading an old post about swapping mpv.dll but I was not able to find specifics on where to get the fixed dll and also this WindowsApps security is a real PITA. Even by takin ownership of the entire directory tree I cant still even rename mpv.dll. I was thinking to get the latest from GitHub and see. Any help truly appreciated if you have been successful in this endeavor

. And thanks for answering bro.

[Mahinepua 81]

Its easy as, I can guide you through.

Download linux lite onto a usb stick, I can give you the latest mpv.dll from the plex forums.

Boot the usb into linux, copy paste into the emby directory and overwrite.

dts-hd shouldnt have any issues however, the bug relates to truehd streams.

Edited January 29 by Mahinepua

[jjstecchino 8]

great. is there a link to the plex forum where I can download the dll? or could you kindly post it here if allowed, or pm me? Thanks so much. would love to have truehd working again

[jjstecchino 8]

do I just download the 86-64 dev build from here: https://github.com/mitzsch/mpv-winbuild/releases - rename libmpv-2.dll to mpv.dll and drop in?

[Mahinepua 81]

Yup those are the builds but the last one that will work with emby was back in October, later mpv versions needed a config change that you can’t do in emby  to correct crushed blacks, haven’t checked later builds yet. I’ll dig the correct version up and post it .

Link to mpv.dll

https://mega.nz/file/Gh4jlBDL#QZB1c-qLfPoGXdsDw6RdlNYbbXzBgUgxAumsmQ1FXUM

Edited January 29 by Mahinepua

[jjstecchino 8]

3 hours ago, Mahinepua said:

Yup those are the builds but the last one that will work with emby was back in October, later mpv versions needed a config change that you can’t do in emby  to correct crushed blacks, haven’t checked later builds yet. I’ll dig the correct version up and post it .

Link to mpv.dll

https://mega.nz/file/Gh4jlBDL#QZB1c-qLfPoGXdsDw6RdlNYbbXzBgUgxAumsmQ1FXUM

Thank you so much for your very kind assistance. It turns out even with the patched mpv.dll still glitched. This was disappointing so I continued to tinker around a little bit and it seems after all the culprit may be my processor not powerful enough. I saw if I disabled HDR contrast recovery that was set to 0.30 in the video player video setting the TrueHD audio glitching stopped. So maybe it was glitching because of too much resources getting used by the video rendering. I didnt think about that as I thought this pc should have been good enough. It is a Ryzen 7 9700X with 32gb ddr5 and a geforce 5070ti. Anyway... I will disable HDR contrast recovery and enjoy better audio. Thank you again Mahinepua!

[Mahinepua 81]

Your pc is fine, I’m running an old i7 4770 with a gtx1650 all settings maxed.

Whats your power mode set to? I had glitches like you with it set to balanced increased the minimum cpu state and no more glitches. Set to performance first to see if it makes a difference. I had the exact same issue dtshd and truehd bitstreaming glitches was driving me crazy.

Regardless you still need the fixed mpv.dll for Truehd.

Edited January 30 by Mahinepua

[scb99 245]

It's worth trying the latest build of the WMC Emby client to see how it does with these kind of things, it's on Github, my experience is that things are often fixed in that that weren't (yet) in the regular windows client. (There's obviously a version of mpv.dll inside that but I have no idea how it relates)

[Mahinepua 81]

WMC emby didn’t use mpv did you mean the new windows app beta?

You can test yourself by using mpv outside of emby.

Once mpv.dll is patched with the truehd fix there won’t be any software issues and audio glitches can only be caused by your hardware or windows power saving settings.

I have multiple PCs bitstreaming to different receivers so your problem is not emby software related.

 

 

[softworkz 5065]

On 2/9/2026 at 2:08 PM, scb99 said:

It's worth trying the latest build of the WMC Emby client to see how it does with these kind of things, it's on Github, my experience is that things are often fixed in that that weren't (yet) in the regular windows client. (There's obviously a version of mpv.dll inside that but I have no idea how it relates)

The playback in the WMC UI Windows app is identical to the regular Windows app.