Plex - Sound Issues

Legacy 2nd gen Apple TV
#1

Hey guys,

So I usually try to figure this stuff out on my own, but I have been trying for about a week now to no avail. I didn’t see any related posts to my issue either, so here it goes…

When I play some of my movies through Plex, the audio levels for the film are obnoxiously loud, causing clipping and major distortion in louder scenes. I tried doing a test just to see if it was the video files themselves by playing them through Media Player and XMBC, and they both played the movies fine at normal volume levels. However, I can’t really use Media Player or XMBC because the buffering issues in both of those players make it impossible to really watch anything.

So basically, if I want to watch something, I have to use PLEX, but the sound is so bad that it makes me want to throw my Apple TV in the trash. Is there a way to fix this? The files I am trying to play are MKVs.

Also, when I first installed PLEX it didn’t have this problem. One day it just started maximizing all the volume levels for no reason (I don’t think I did anything, but maybe I did! Yikes!) and for the life of me I cannot figure out how to get it to play the files normally.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!!

#2

I’m having the same issue here. Any resolution?

#3

Hey,

I have not found any resolutions to this issue. Anything you find on your own, would you mind posting back here. I haven’t found anything, other than I’m pretty sure it does it with MKVs with DTS soundtracks, not 5.1 (at least as far as I can tell so far).

Thanks!

#4

I had the same problem using my apple tv 2 ( plex had sounds clipping and major distortion). I did these steps, and my broblem went away.

 

If you have a Surround Sound capable amp connected, there are a couple of settings that need to be made to enable Surround Sound:

In the AppleTV Settings:

  • Set Audio & Video > Dolby Digital Out to On

In the Plex Client:

  • Choose Settings > Playback settings
  • Set Dolby AC3 capable receiver to Yes
  • Set Direct Streaming to Enabled

Note: The Plex Client for AppleTV is not able to directly playback DTS soundtracks. If your show has a DTS audio track, the Plex Media Server will automatically transcode the DTS track to AC3.