Roon not playing multi-channel audio on M4 Mac Mini via HDMI to Anthem AVM 60 (ref#JI3DNM)

[david8 (David)]

Hi! What’s not quite right with Roon?

· None of the above quite fits

None of the above quite fits

· None of these quite match

Tell us what's going on

· Trying out Roon but can't get multi-channel to work. Running everything on a new M4 Mac Mini 16GB/256GB attached, via HDMI, to Anthem AVM 60 processor. I set up Audio MIDI Setup correctly for 7.1 / 48KHz. Playing 5.1 FLAC files in VLC works perfectly but Roon is only using left/right front channels. Sound Output is set to System Output as is Setup->Audio->This Mac.
How do I get Roon to work correctly?

Tell us about your home network

· Mac Mini running Roon on same Eero 6e LAN as Mac Mini with external USB drive holding all the media files.

[Geoff_Coupe]

Have you set up multichannel in Roon’s Audio device settings? It’s in the Advanced section of Device Setup (click on “Show advanced” and scroll down…)

[vadim]

Hello @david8

Thanks for the detail, and for testing with VLC first. That test confirms the Mac mini, the HDMI connection, and the AVM 60 all handle multichannel correctly, so the chain itself is fine.

We looked at your logs and the picture is clear. You already have two zones set up in Roon: System Output, and a separate zone for the AVM 60 itself. Roon sees the AVM 60 correctly and reports eight channels available from it. However, every playback session in your logs went to System Output, and every one of them was two channels.

On macOS, System Output is a stereo path. Roon sends audio through the system default output there and will not send more than two channels, which is exactly what you are hearing. The AVM 60 zone you already created is the one that can carry all your channels.

Please try this:

1. In the zone picker at the bottom right of Roon, select the AVM 60 zone rather than System Output.
2. Open Settings, then Audio, click the gear next to the AVM 60 zone, and open Device Setup.
3. Turn on Exclusive Mode, and set the channel layout to match your system, 5.1 or 7.1.
4. Play one of your 5.1 FLAC files to that zone.

Once it is playing, please click the Signal Path indicator next to the volume control and check the channel count it reports. If it still shows two channels, please send us a screenshot of the Signal Path and of the Device Setup screen for the AVM 60 zone.

[david8 (David)]

Hi again. Some success and a real brain-teaser!

The main issue appears to have been in the Output Device config for the Anthem. First, it didn’t work right if I had Exclusive Access enabled. This caused Roon to switch from 7.1 to stereo every time I hit play. And, I had to set it to 7.1 under Advanced Settings. With this, it kind-of works…

I have a few small 5.1 FLACs that each play white noise to one channel/speaker. Again, from VLC, they each work perfectly and Audacity shows the expected noise for each in a single channel. And Roon? Left/Right Front work fine. Left/Right Surround work fine. Center and Sub are reversed!!! Where is this happening? I don’t see any Roon settings about channel mapping. Are there any that I can use to debug/fix this? I’m so close but it’s totally unusable right now. I t think I have a week left of the Roon trial so there better be a solution soon if the Roon folks want my money!

Thanks!

David

ps - I have lots of screen shots of all the various MacOS and Roon setting windows if anyone wants to see them.

[vadim]

Hello @david8

Good progress. A correction to something first: Roon does have channel controls, we pointed you in the wrong direction.

In Device Setup there is a Swap rear and surround channels toggle, though that affects the rear and surround pair rather than Centre and LFE, so it is not your fix. More useful is DSP, then Speaker setup, which lists the channels Roon is working with. You will see them numbered: 1 Left, 2 Right, 3 Centre, 4 LFE. That is the standard order for WAV and FLAC, and it confirms what Roon is sending.

Here is a test that will tell us exactly where the swap happens, and it takes a minute.

1. Open DSP, enable Speaker setup, and set the Gain for 3: Centre to -60 dB. Leave everything else at zero.
2. Play one of your test files and listen.

If your centre speaker goes silent, Roon’s channel 3 is reaching the centre correctly, and the swap is happening before that, in how the file’s channels are being read.

If your subwoofer goes silent instead, then Roon’s channel 3 is arriving at the sub, and the swap is happening after Roon, in macOS or in the Anthem.

Please then set Centre back to 0 and repeat with 4: LFE at -60 dB to confirm.

One thing to change before testing: in Device Setup, please turn off Send stereo/mono content as 7.1. It is currently on, and it pads stereo material out to all channels, which can muddy what you are hearing during a test like this. You can turn it back on afterwards if you want it.

Depending on the result, the fix will be in one of two places:

If the swap is after Roon, open Audio MIDI Setup, select the AVM 60, click Configure Speakers, set it to 7.1, and check the Centre and Subwoofer assignments. Also check the speaker and channel configuration for that HDMI input on the Anthem itself, since Anthem processors allow per-input assignment.

If the swap is before Roon, we will look at the files and your Signal Path.

Please send the screenshots you offered along with the result of the test, particularly Configure Speakers from Audio MIDI Setup and the Signal Path while a 5.1 file is playing.

Separately, we still want to come back to Exclusive Mode dropping the zone from 7.1 to stereo. That is not correct behaviour and we would like to look at it once the channel question is settled.

[david8 (David)]

Hi. Where is the DSP menu you’re talking about? Im running Roon 2.71. When I go into Device Setup for zone Anthem, I see the following items:

Private Zone - no

Exclusive mode - yes

DSD playback strategy - convert to PCM

MQACapabilities - no

Volume control - Device volume

Resync delay - 0ms

(advanced)

CLock master priority - default

Enable MQA core decoder - no

Enable integer mode - no

Use max buffer size - no

Use power-of-2 buffer size - yes

Channel layout - 7.1

Send stereo/mono content as 7.1 - no

Swap rear and surround channels - no

Multichannel mixing - Downmix as needed

Where is DSP??? Also, I don’t think I just changed anything but now the device setup is stuck on 2.0 instead of 7.1! Im thinking about going back to JRiver. Roon looks much nicer but that’s meaningless if it won’t play my music correctly. How much simpler can I get having all 3 parts of Roon on one box?

[Rugby (aka Daniel or Big Dan)]

@david8

Where is DSP???

DSP can be in a couple of places depending on what DSP you are talking about. Currently, Vadim is suggesting this.

With the zone selected, click on the volume icon at the bottom, then on the waveform icon, I’ve highlited both in green.

That waveform Icon is called Muse and is the DSP options for THAT specific output. It will bring you to a menu like this…

If you don’t see Speaker Setup, then click The ADD Filter button and Choose Speaker Setup. It should add it to the Filter list with it enabled. Doing so, got me to this …

At this point, you should be able to follow the suggestion Vadim posted.

[benjamin]

Hey @david8,

We couldn’t have said it better than @Rugby, thank you Rugby!

Let us know how the above goes, and if you have any trouble along the way.

[david8 (David)]

It’s just getting worse. I found the DSP menu and had to add the speaker module but now the Anthem setup is stuck on 2.0 greyed-out and the MUSE speaker setup also only shows two speakers. The Mac Audio-MIDI setup shows 7.1 and, again, playa fine in VLC.

I thought Roon was a mature, professional system but I guess not. Menu settings are scattered in multple, random places. The FAQ for setting up on a Mac doesn’t even talk about multi-channel. Trying to get it to work on a pretty standard 7.1 home-theater system with a brand new dedicated Mac Mini is turning into a Masters thesis. Even Vadim’s help message sent me off looking for some DSP menu but didn’t tell me how to find it! I was really looking forward to using Roon in my home theater and using Arc, but its looking more and more like it’s a ton of hacks that are not reliable. Can anyone give me a reason not to just delete it all and go for a competing product?

[benjamin]

Hey @david8,

I’m sorry, this has been a rough first week, and I understand why you’re out of patience. You bought a dedicated Mac Mini for this, the hardware is fully capable of what you’re asking, and you should be listening to music by now instead of hunting for menus. Let me get you across the line.

First, the greyed-out 2.0 is a handshake problem, not a Roon setting.

When Channel layout is greyed out at 2.0, it’s because macOS is currently reporting your Anthem as a two-channel device. Roon only offers the layouts CoreAudio says the device supports, so when the HDMI link renegotiates down, the dropdown collapses and locks. Over HDMI this happens any time the AVM 60 is off or in standby, is on a different input, or the link re-handshakes after the Mac sleeps. A headless Mac Mini is especially prone to it, because there’s no display on that port holding the link up.

Do these in order, the order matters:

1. Power on the AVM 60 and select the HDMI input the Mac Mini is plugged into. Leave it on and on that input for everything below.
2. Open Audio MIDI Setup on the Mac and select the Anthem device. The Format line should read 8 ch. If it reads 2 ch, we’re chasing HDMI, not Roon, reseat the HDMI cable at the Mac end (Anthem still powered on), then check again.
3. Once Audio MIDI Setup shows 8 ch, quit and restart Roon Server, the whole thing, not just the remote window. Roon reads a device’s capabilities when it takes hold of it, so it needs to look again now that the Mac is seeing eight channels.
4. Settings → Audio → Device Setup on the Anthem zone. Channel layout should now be selectable. Set it to 7.1.

To stop it recurring: set the Mac to never sleep (System Settings → Lock Screen, and Energy), and get in the habit of having the Anthem powered on before Roon Server starts.

Second, delete the Speaker Setup module and add it back.

You added Speaker Setup while the zone was stuck at 2.0, so it captured a two-channel layout. That’s why Muse is only showing you two speakers, it’s faithfully reflecting what the zone claimed to be at the moment you created it.

Once step 4 above shows 7.1, remove that module and add it again. It’ll come back with all eight channels.

Getting there: select the Anthem zone → click the volume icon at the bottom right → click the waveform icon (that’s Muse) → Speaker Setup.

Third. the Center/Sub swap:

Now that you have a real 7.1 layout in Muse, fix the swap there rather than in macOS. Speaker Setup lists every channel Roon is working with and lets you reassign them, put Center back on Center and LFE back on the subwoofer. Fixing it in Roon means it survives macOS updates and HDMI renegotiations; the Audio MIDI Setup speaker map does not.

Worth understanding why this happened at all, because it’s not a bug: VLC plays through the macOS mixer, which applies the speaker map from Audio MIDI Setup’s Configure Speakers page. Roon in Exclusive Mode deliberately bypasses that mixer so nothing in the OS touches your audio, which also means it doesn’t inherit the OS’s remap. That’s exactly why VLC sounded right and Roon didn’t. It’s a tradeoff we make on purpose, and Speaker Setup is where you correct for it, once.

On the menus:

There is a logic to it, and I think it’ll click quickly. Roon keeps two categories deliberately apart:

• Settings → Audio → Device Setup, what the hardware is and what it’s capable of. Set once, then forget it exists.
• Muse, per zone, what you want done to the music in this room. Changes with the room, the material, and your mood.

Every setting sits on one side of that line, consistently, everywhere in the app. We don’t collapse them into a single page the way JRiver does because a Roon system is usually many zones and many endpoints, and per-device facts and per-room preferences don’t travel together. It’s one concept to learn instead of a page to memorize, and once you have it the app stops feeling random.

The other half of that design is worth seeing for yourself once this is running: start a 5.1 track and click the signal path light. You’ll get every step between the file on disk and your speakers, and whether anything altered it along the way. I don’t know of another player that will show you that, and it’s the reason a channel mapping issue in Roon is diagnosable in three clicks rather than guesswork.

Run steps 1–4 and tell me what Audio MIDI Setup reports at step 2. That one number tells us whether we’re chasing Roon or chasing an HDMI link. If the layout is still greyed out while the Mac is reporting 8 ch, say so here and we’ll pull fresh Roon Server logs for additional diagnostics.

[david8 (David)]

Getting closer but not quite.

First, the greyed-out 2.0 is a handshake problem, not a Roon setting.

When Channel layout is greyed out at 2.0, it’s because macOS is currently reporting your Anthem as a two-channel device. Roon only offers the layouts CoreAudio says the device supports, so when the HDMI link renegotiates down, the dropdown collapses and locks. Over HDMI this happens any time the AVM 60 is off or in standby, is on a different input, or the link re-handshakes after the Mac sleeps. A headless Mac Mini is especially prone to it, because there’s no display on that port holding the link up.

After power cycling, Roon was showing 7.1. However, every time I hit Play on my 5.1 files, Audio MIDI Setup immediately jumped back to the Anthem device sowing 2.0. I could put it back to 7.1 but Roon playing would cause it to go back to stereo each time. I’ll go through the steps below - which I pretty much have multiple times but maybe I missed something.

Do these in order, the order matters:

1. Power on the AVM 60 and select the HDMI input the Mac Mini is plugged into. Leave it on and on that input for everything below.

DONE

1. Open Audio MIDI Setup on the Mac and select the Anthem device. The Format line should read 8 ch. If it reads 2 ch, we’re chasing HDMI, not Roon, reseat the HDMI cable at the Mac end (Anthem still powered on), then check again.

It initially showed 2.0 but I changed it to 8 ch 24-bit integer 48.0 kHz. I did un/re-plug the HDMI cable and it stay on 8 ch.

One odd thing I did notice earlier when testing with Configure Speakers and playing my test files in VLC.

First, it appears I did have to swap channels 3 and 4 in Configure Speakers for the Center and Sub. I could have sworn that I didn’t need to do this earlier. Swapping them here fixed playing those channels in both Configure Speakers and in VLC. Second, in Configure Speakers, channels 5-8 were all correct playing test noise but in VLC, the surround and rear surround were flipped! I see that Roon has a setting for this so it must be a somewhat common issue or maybe the FLAC files are wrong.

1. Once Audio MIDI Setup shows 8 ch, quit and restart Roon Server, the whole thing, not just the remote window. Roon reads a device’s capabilities when it takes hold of it, so it needs to look again now that the Mac is seeing eight channels.

I don’t see any Start/Stop Roon server control and searching your website, I see others saying the same thing. Quitting the player doesn’t appear to help so I had to run Activity Monitor. I see the processes RoonAppliance and RoonServer. I see RoonServer is listed as a login item in Settings->Login Items.

I quit both processes. When I started the player, those two processes were started again.

1. Settings → Audio → Device Setup on the Anthem zone. Channel layout should now be selectable. Set it to 7.1.

To stop it recurring: set the Mac to never sleep (System Settings → Lock Screen, and Energy), and get in the habit of having the Anthem powered on before Roon Server starts.

Yes, it’s still showing 8 ch with the channel swaps (3<—>4, 5/6<—>7/8). And I already had it set to never turn off. For now, I removed these swaps and will do them inside Roon as you explain below.

Second, delete the Speaker Setup module and add it back.

Ok - Speaker Setup under MUSE shows 8 speakers.

You added Speaker Setup while the zone was stuck at 2.0, so it captured a two-channel layout. That’s why Muse is only showing you two speakers, it’s faithfully reflecting what the zone claimed to be at the moment you created it.

Once step 4 above shows 7.1, remove that module and add it again. It’ll come back with all eight channels.

Yes

Getting there: select the Anthem zone → click the volume icon at the bottom right → click the waveform icon (that’s Muse) → Speaker Setup.

Third. the Center/Sub swap:

Now that you have a real 7.1 layout in Muse, fix the swap there rather than in macOS. Speaker Setup lists every channel Roon is working with and lets you reassign them, put Center back on Center and LFE back on the subwoofer. Fixing it in Roon means it survives macOS updates and HDMI renegotiations; the Audio MIDI Setup speaker map does not.

Ok - my 5.1 flac files are all playing with the expected center/sub and surr/rear swaps! However, I don’t see how to swap them in the Speaker Setup. It’s just a list of the 8 speakers and each has adjustments for Distance, Gain, and Invert Phase. Where is channel assign?? FYI, I deleted all the other MUSE Filters besides Speaker Setup.

[david8 (David)]

Can anyone here answer? I’m running out of time on my trial period.

1. Where is Roon Server Stop/Start control in the app?
2. Where do I change/swap/fix the channel assignments in Roon?

Thanks

[Saturn94]

1. I don’t believe you can Stop/Start Roonserver from the Roon app.
2. Perhaps this is what you are looking for? My apologies if I’ve misunderstood. Note: I’ve not used this feature before.

Go into Muse like you did to access Speaker Setup, but instead of selecting Speaker Setup, select Procedural EQ.

Then select Add Operation

Then select Mix

If I’m understanding this feature correctly, you can the select where each input channel should be outputted from Roon.

I hope this helps answer your questions.

[david8 (David)]

Thanks for the info! Why is mix/channel assign under EQ and not Speaker Setup? There’s zero chance I would have found this - who designed this?

Anyway, it’s all messed up again!!! I went through the whole process Benjamin listed with rebooting the Mac, setting the Audio MIDI speaker settings, quitting Roon server, etc. But every time I hit Play in Roon, the Mac Audio MIDI speaker settings jump back to 2-channel! I really want this to work! Can’t someone from Roon share my screen and figure out what’s wrong?

[Saturn94]

I had to poke around a bit in Muse to find it.

I hope you’re able to get your issue resolved as having multichannel in Roon is awesome.

I also ran into an issue with multichannel playback initially, though in my case it ended up having nothing to do with Roon; the HDMI output on my streamer was timing out after about 9 minutes. The manufacturer of my streamer was able to fix it. In the end, for me it was worth the effort to get it working.

[david8 (David)]

I give up! I’ve spent so many hours on this. I just uninstalled Roon (including Library files), got the Mac Audio configured for 8 channels, reinstalled Roon, verified that Setup->Audio->Anthem Zone was set for 7.1, verified MUSE->Speaker Setup showed 7.1 and then went to play one of the 5.1 test files and, as before, the Mac Audio MIDI Setup jumped back to 2 channel! Tried quitting/restarting RoonServer but that didn’t help.

I’ve been trying to get help here for several days. I’ve had some good info from Benjamin and Vadim from Roon but they both gave me partial instructions and left out import info and haven’t posted any help since last Friday even though my trial period is almost over. Saturn94 and Rugby have helped fill in but I still can’t play any surround audio. It almost worked for a short time but something changed that I don’t see and now it’s just stereo.

I hate to give up on Roon. It looks great and the multiple endpoints and Arc are great but I don’t seem to have a choice. I still find it hard to believe that my setup of a Mac Mini connected to a 7.1 home-theater system via HDMI is in any way exotic or rare. I’d think it’s fairly common. I’ve been working with a computer-based, surround-audio playback since 2007 with JRiver in Windows. That’s almost 20 years so I think I know what I’m doing pretty well!

Maybe I’ll try again in a few months. From what I’ve read, many Roon users also use JRiver for tagging and library cleanup anyway.

[Saturn94]

How frustrating!

I’m curious if you would have the same issue with Jriver on your current setup. It looks like Jriver offers a free trial, so it may be worth trying, if only to test if a different music player makes a difference or not. It could be some HDMI wonkiness going on between the Mini and the Anthem?

[david8 (David)]

Funny you asked… I installed the latest JRiver and it worked perfectly right away with no configuration!

[benjamin]

Hi @david8

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you! We’ve gone ahead and extended your trial so you have room to work through this without the deadline pressure, no need to do anything to activate it. You should be good to go!

When Audio MIDI Setup flips to 2 ch the instant you press Play, macOS isn’t failing, it’s reporting that a client just asked it for stereo. The question we should have been asking from the start is which client. There are three candidates we don’t think we ever ruled out, and one of them explains your symptoms exactly.

Please try these in order:

1. Turn off the System Output zone. Settings → Audio, and disable System Output so it can’t be selected at all. Then set macOS System Settings → Sound → Output to anything other than the Anthem, Mac mini Speakers is fine.

Because your Mac’s sound output is pointed at the Anthem, that zone aims at the same physical HDMI device as your AVM 60 zone. Playing to System Output would produce precisely what you’re seeing: HDMI drops to 2 ch on Play, you get stereo, and the AVM 60 zone’s settings still correctly read 7.1 when you go look at them. In your last few posts you verified that Settings → Audio → Anthem was set to 7.1, but that’s the device’s configuration, not the zone the transport is actually playing to, and those got reset when you reinstalled. Vadim spotted the two-zone thing back on the 6th and we never went back to re-confirm it.

2. Turn Exclusive Mode back ON. Device Setup for the AVM 60 zone → Exclusive Mode on, channel layout 7.1.

I think we sent you the wrong way here. You disabled it early on and it cleared up the first problem, so it stayed off, but non-exclusive is exactly the mode where Roon plays into the shared macOS mixer and doesn’t claim the device or set its format, which leaves the stream free to be renegotiated down to 2 ch mid-playback. JRiver works partly because it takes the device exclusively and sets 8 channels itself. Now that the device reliably shows 8 ch, Exclusive Mode is the right setting.

3. Reset RAATServer.

• Quit Roon Server from its menu bar icon
• In Finder, hold Option and click Go → Library, find the folder named RAATServer, and rename it to RAATServer_old
• Start Roon Server, then set up the AVM 60 zone fresh with steps 1 and 2 above

4. Clear out all Muse DSP first. Remove the Speaker Setup filter and the Procedural EQ. Speaker Setup was added while the zone was stuck at 2.0, and either module can be holding a stale two-channel config. Get clean 7.1 playback confirmed first, then add channel remapping back.

5. Check your test file’s sample rate. Audio MIDI showed 8 ch / 24-bit / 48.0 kHz. If those 5.1 files are 96 or 192 kHz, CoreAudio can fall back to the only format available at that rate, which is often stereo. Try a 5.1 file that’s natively 48 kHz, or set Max Sample Rate to 48 kHz in Device Setup, and see if 8 ch survives.

With that, two quick things that would tell us a lot:

Play a plain stereo track to the AVM 60 zone. Does Audio MIDI still flip to 2 ch, or does it only happen with a 5.1 file? That single answer splits the problem in half: if any playback triggers it, we’re looking at steps 1–3; if only multichannel does, it’s step 5.

Grab a Signal Path screenshot while a 5.1 file is playing, with the zone name visible at the bottom of the window. We asked for this on day one and never got it, and it would have shown us both the zone and the channel count in one image.

If you’re willing, this in Terminal is even better than our own logs for this particular problem, start it, then press Play:

log stream --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.coreaudio"' --info

That will name the process requesting the format change. If you run the same capture once with Roon and once with JRiver, the difference between the two will be conclusive.

Lastly, two lingering questions you’ve asked:

Stop/start Roon Server on macOS: there’s no control in the app, but you can manually quit Roon Server via the macOS taskbar.

Channel assignment: @Saturn94 had it right, Muse → Procedural EQ → Add Operation → Mix. Your reaction to finding channel routing filed under EQ is fair, and I’ve passed it along internally.

Thanks for sticking with us here!

[benjamin]

Hi again @david8,

Thanks for your patience, and I want to correct something from my last post. I suggested turning Exclusive Mode back on, which was actually the wrong call for your setup, your own testing had already shown Exclusive Mode was what pushed the zone to stereo on every Play, and that matches the other reports. Non-exclusive is the mode to run on this hardware. You give up the bit-perfect path, but it’s the one that actually holds a multichannel stream today.

Your JRiver result is consistent with what we see from other players on this same chain, and it’s a useful data point for the ticket.

Where I’d pick this back up. You were closest to working at post #11, non-exclusive, Audio MIDI at 8 ch / 24-bit / 48 kHz, and the channel swaps done in Configure Speakers. By your own description, your 5.1 FLACs were “all playing with the expected center/sub and surr/rear swaps.” Then it regressed. That regression is the thing worth chasing, not a rebuild from scratch.

Two questions, and both are quick:

1. What sample rate are your 5.1 files? This is the one thing I asked last time that we never got an answer on, and it’s still the most likely single explanation. You had the device at 48 kHz. If the files themselves are 96 or 192 kHz, Roon asks CoreAudio to switch the device to that rate on Play, and over HDMI the higher rates often only offer a stereo layout, so the device lands at 2.0. That would match your symptom exactly, right down to the timing.

If they are high-rate: set Max Sample Rate to 48 kHz in Device Setup and try again. If that’s the cause, you have working multichannel today.

2. What is “Multichannel mixing” set to? Your post #6 shows it at “Downmix as needed.” Worth trying the other setting, if Roon is permitted to downmix, a device that has slipped to 2 channels gets quietly downmixed instead of failing loudly. Changing it won’t necessarily fix playback, but it turns a silent collapse into something visible in the Signal Path, which tells us where this is happening.

I checked your other settings from post #6, Volume control is already on Device volume and power-of-2 buffer is already on, so there’s nothing to change there.

You can skip the RAATServer reset and the System Output changes from my last post. Those were lower-probability and I’d rather not spend your time on them ahead of the two above.

Your trial is extended, so there’s no clock on this. Thank you for the detail you put into these reports!