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Bethann Gendernalik

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Aug 2, 2024, 6:34:50 AM8/2/24

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I use an HDMI switch with an SPDIF optical audio extractor to get the audio from the HDMI to my old surround amp which handles DD and DTS (not HD). This works well in surround sound with everything except for Netflix on Roku where I get 2.0 sound. The setup even gets DD surround with Netflix on a Fire Stick 2nd gen.

If your TV or A/V receiver isn't capable of playing Dolby Digital+ audio formats (as detected by the 'Auto' settings in Settings>Audio>Audio mode, you would only receive Stereo audio from the Netflix channel.

Plex is doing the transcoding, not the Roku. For what you are seeing, check to see of any of the audio processing functions are enabled. You can only access them when something is playing. Press the * button while the video is playing and look for any sound function and make sure it's turned off. It might be labeled volume leveling, or something different. But any audio processing must be turned off or you only get stereo sound.

Volume Leveling is turned off. The only other relevant setting I can see is Roku's main Audio Setting where I have tried all the options and none of them give surround sound with Netflix. Volume Leveling doesn't seem to stop surround sound on Plex.

On further investigation, it seems that if you set Volume Leveling before starting the video, then it does indeed set the sound to stereo. If you set Volume Leveling after starting the video it doesn't set the sound to stereo, however it doesn't seem to do any volume leveling either (until the video is restarted).

If I play a DTS movie via Plex, and the Roku setting it set to DD then it comes through as DD. If the Roku setting is set to either DD or DD & DTS then not surprisingly it comes through as DTS. So something is able to convert from DTS to DD, presumably the Roku since it is the Roku setting that determines the output format. I would have thought that same transcoder would convert from DD+ to DD if the Roku Audio setting is DD.

Seems like we have a similar setup. I never found a solution. Netflix has never worked for me in DD5.1 on Roku. I just use Netflix on my Firestick instead which does do DD5.1. However the Roku is much better when streaming movies from Windows via Plex and gets DD5.1, DTS5.1 and lip-sync much better.

My sound comes out of the TV and goes to the receiver via an optical cable. Sometimes the voices are muffled even though I have a great center speaker. This is in a 15x20 foot room. Your comments above are for an HDMI connection between TV and receiver. I know I could just get an HDMI cable and experiment but I thought I would get your thoughts first. So is an HDMI cable going to give me better audio?

What would be nice is if Tablo can give us the option to store both surround sound and non surround sound audio in our recordings. Audio takes up way less space than video. If tablo made this an option then the roku could pick the appropriate audio track to play based on the audio playback device that is being used. Since it is could be a voluntary selection, users would know what space they would be sacrificing.

I am no expert but I think this is the reason we get only 1 audio track. Either the native untouched AC3 track or the transcoded 2.0 AAC track. Not both. You have to actively opt in to the SS, so maybe they should just explicitly warn users they cannot get audio on the Roku remote then they can decide for themselves how important SS is, especially since many Tablo users are just playing back the audio on their HDTV which has only stereo speakers to being with.

Check out page 92 and 94 of the manual for your TV. The specs say it only supports PCM audio over HDMI (which is quite rare). Almost all new HDTVs support Dolby/AC3 over HDMI. The Roku cannot decode AC3 audio to PCM, so it just passes through the AC3 audio to your TV.

So I have an AppleTV HD (4th Gen) running tvOS 14.0, and surround sound is broken on Netflix. I am pretty sure it was working forever before I upgraded to tvOS 14, which is why I just spent an hour and a half trying to fix it.

I enabled tvOS Developer tools to show the media stream HUD, and it is clearly outputting 2 channel audio for all Netflix content. Disney+ and HBOMax are clearly outputting Dolby Digital or PCM (e.g. 6 channels). I have tooled with all of the Netflix and tvOS settings, including signing into a totally different Netflix account - all to no avail.

I can report the same problem after the recent Netflix app update. I updated to tvOS last week and 5.1 surround sound was working fine with Netflix until the app update on Tuesday. I have a LG CX OLED and Marantz NR1602 which does not decode Dolby Atmos.

tvOS 14 has changed the auto setting sound output. I send sound via HDMI ARC to my AV receiver. With tvOS 13, i had to set the Apple TV to down mix to Dolby Digital 5.1 to get 5.1 surround sound as I cannot pass through 5.1 LPCM over ARC with my setup. Now, the auto setting correctly sends a Dolby digital 5.1 signal over ARC on Apple TV+, Amazon Prime video and Netflix until the recent app update broke surround sound. I suspect that the recent app updates in Netflix and Plex are to blame but only on tvOS 14.

I noticed this same problem on my Apple TV 4K yesterday (Wednesday 9/23). I've been going crazy trying to figure out why I'm no longer receiving Dolby Atmos audio while watching content from Netflix clearly labeled as Dolby Atmos. It was working fine before yesterday.

After fooling with all the different settings on my Apple TV and my Yamaha receiver, nothing helped. That's when I went into other apps (Disney+, Apple TV+) and played content with Dolby Atmos, and it worked perfectly. It seems to be a problem with Netflix only.

I am having the same problem only getting 2 channel audio, no 5.1 or atmos on Netflix with my Apple TV 4K, played around with every setting under the sun, updated my reciever (Yamaha RXA3060) and even reset my Apple TV. I hope it is fixed soon, so frustrating ):

Deleted and added Netflix app 5 times. First time works but after that, no luck. Every video subscription service (Apple TV, Amazon Prime, etc) all support 5.1 while Netflix chokes and only supports stereo after the TVOS 14 update.

I have been a xfinity customer for about 5 years, moving from another area and cable company. One thing that has bothered me for some time is the audio feed from most if not all channels. It really came to light when I tried the free trial of sling tv last night. I was watching a version of the show chopped on sling tv. I could hear things in all of my 5.1 speakers... things rattling in the background, more like you should experience. I have never heard this on the xfinity version. Things like sporting events are not the same, I used to hear crowd noise from my speakers, more like you expect from a surround system.

I seem to have narrowed down the problem. It seems to be the hdmi extender I am using. I have the Xfinity receiver plugged into the extender, then the extender into the tv. If I plug it directly into the tv, the sound works fine. So, it's my setup. Thanks for the help.

So... yesterday I tried a little experiment.. I used netflix inside the xfinity system.. My receiver only picked up standard PCM stereo sound on a program I know broadcasts in dolby surround sound. I then went to netflix on my amazon firestick that is plugged directly into the tv.. and the receiver picked up dolby surround.. The only thing I can get out of my xfinity box is pcm stereo..

I recently bought a Samsung UHD TV Smart TV and am using Yamaha receiver with 5.1 surround.
I had to install the optical cable from TV to Yamaha receiver and then set your receiver to
Audio-1 so you can then hear Netflix ! Good Luck

I cannot get any sound through my receiver when using netflix app from my samsung un55f6300. I am using ARC HDMI input and I tried an optical cable to the receiver. Do I need to change any settings on the tv, app or stereo? If anyone can help let me know. My receiver is a denon X400

Great article Eric, I learned a lot, and it was very clear. Method 2 works for me, but I tried method 4 with the ARC capability (tv, receiver, and hdmi cable have the capability), I activated ARC on both the tv and the receiver through the set up menus, kept my receiver on the hdmi channel, and it does not work: I still get the sound from the directv, with the image of the tv app (Netflix, YouTube, etc.) I have no idea why this does not work ?

Also, for other components (cable box, media player and blu ray player), I have a conventional setup where the components are connected to the receiver via HDMI and one HDMI cable goes from the receiver to the video in of the TV. This works well and I want to keep it the same way while being able to do the items above (Netflix and Chromecase on surround sound).