As written above my setup encompasses a Pioneer AVR connected to the Mac Mini M1 over HDMI. When playing 5.1 multichannel music I realised that my center speaker is not working, Front Left+Right and Rear Left + Right work perfectly, it’s just the Center speaker getting no signal at all.
I imported a 5.0 FLAC test file into Roon which proves the effect that only the front and rear speakers are working. The center speaker however works perfectly with the test file when being played by VLC.
Tried several different settings in MIDI setup with 7.1/6.1/5.1 as well as swapped the center speaker and LFE speaker in the speaker configuration without success.
Can you please access your Device Setup for the HDMI zone (Roon Settings → Audio → Cogwheel → Device Setup), then try to scroll to the bottom and set the channels to 7.1 and then check swap rear and surround channels. Does that allow the center channel to be heard?
thanks for the hint, unfortunately there is no effect, tried all combinations in MIDI Setup (8 / 7 / 6 / 5 channels each at 24 bit) and speaker configurations to assign/reassign LFE/Center to channel 3/4 and played around with Roon settings - audio - device setup 5.1 / 6.1 / 7.1 as well as swap rear/surround channels without impact, the center speaker is either quiet or dull.
When I enable exclusive mode it says “audio device in use”.
The strange thing is that my surround test file works perfectly with VLC, it’s just within Roon that the Center is supressed.
Regards, Matt
P.S. Also tried HQPlayer to use its channel mapping, but do not get it running at all.