Whether I set Roon to send stereo/mono as mutichannel or not, its always outputs stereo music as multichannel with silent surrounds

I have the latest version of Roon, v1.6 Build 390, running on a 2012 Mac Mini server core under Mojave, outputting via HDMI to my Integra DTR-70.4 receiver.

Whether I set Roon to send stereo/mono as mutichannel or not, its always outputs stereo music as multichannel with silent surrounds. At least my receiver interprets all signals as multichannel and will not allow me to apply Dolby PLxII. So, as of now, what appears in the KB is NOT what actually happens with the current build, unless I’m doing something wrong.

I have a single HDMI output in the Audio Midi settings, set for 8 channel 24/96. I was hoping to up that to 24-32/192 with a new Mac Mini, my receiver can handle it (even DSD, but good luck with that!) But before I drop coin, I want to make sure I can get this to work correctly with my existing hardware.

I’ve tried all the Roon setting combinations I could think of, including switching the Roon HDMI output to 5.1 and 7.1 with the same results. The only way to get both stereo and multichannel music to output properly is to manually change the speaker setup in the Audio Midi app or switch between 2 and 5.1/7.1 in the Roon settings between songs.

This isn’t a workable solutions…

If I can’t get Roon to switch properly between stereo and 5.0/5.1 music sources, I feel it’s a showstopper.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Michael

@support

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Hello @Michael_Edmonds,

We performed some extensive QA testing regarding the HDMI behavior on MacOS. Our finding was that many HDMI devices are mis-reporting their capabilities on MacOS, reporting support for only 44.1 or 48kHz playback in 2ch mode and then forcing 8ch signaling at higher rates. We’re investigating if there’s anything we can do better here, as this appears to be a limitation of the operating system drivers. I will get back to you when the development team has had a chance to take a look at this.

-John

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Mine seems to report the capabilities correctly. The only anomaly there is that it takes going in-and-out of the audio device setup before speaker configuration changes are picked up by Roon.

Is Roon at least attempting to change the output from stereo to multi-channel based on the format of the track being played? As I said, the KB article contradicts itself.

I’d like to know what the current intended behavior is.

Thank you.

@support

Hello @Michael_Edmonds,

Just an update, we are continuing testing this report in the QA lab with hardware from multiple manufactures. It would be helpful if you could take a screenshot of the Audio Midi Setup page showing the “format” dropdown menu options. I’ve included an example below.

11%20PM

-John

Pretty much identical, John…

2 posts were split to a new topic: MacBook Pro HDMI dropouts with NAD