Hi!
Set up my second stadia in my living room. And started playing destiny. Noticed that it was only playing in stereo ok my Yamaha 5.1 system. Went through settings. Verified it was on an Arc port on my lg oled, tried pcm instead of auto. Tried optical and also rebooting the Chromecast, tv, and Yamaha. No dice. I then casted netflix, and hulu shows to it and they played in 5.1, youtube didn't though. What am I missing?
I'm actually having the same issue, I have a Sony 5.1 soundbar set up and it says "5.1 not supported on this device"
The only question with that is through the same Chromecast ultra 5.1 work s with almost every other video app. Hulu, Netflix, Disney plus, and Amazon prime video all support 5.1 through it. Just YouTube and stadia do not work. I also tried the eArc setting for audio and didn't make any difference.
I have a Philips 65OLED806 that plays stadia in beautiful 5.1 through my Nvidia Shield, Sonos Arc, sub and surrounds, through the eArc port on my TV.
What I find strange is the native app for the TV can only play dolby stereo, or pcm stereo, no matter the amount of settings fiddled with, seems to make a difference.
Is the base android TV app unable to play 5.1?
As I use my shield for almost everything else, but as I'm sure you know there is no HDR on shields, so I just want to use the android TV app, my sonos Arc, sub and surrounds through the TV with eArc hdmi 2.1 socket.
Let me know what I'm missing if you can.
Thanks
Rando.
Edit.
I can't even get stadia to play 5.1 from the shield now, the best I can get is dolby digital plus 2.0?
Any help would be appreciated.
Interesting that you mention YouTube also gets it, because the preferred codec there is the same that Stadia prefers and that Chromecast supports, VP9. I'd say that sound advice you got sounds sound.
It is for sure because of ARC. I myself am in a similar situation and have no 5.1 because my very new TV doesn't have eARC and my audio setup only uses ARC (Sonos). So I am writing to Stadia daily to make Stadia surround sound work through ARC as well. I hope others can join me!
Ok, I have the same problem. Something is extremely fishy with Stadia and Dolby Digital 5.1.
I've a Samsung UE49NU7179N. This TV has an optical out (toslink) and a HDMI ARC compatible port. My CCU is connected to this port and I've activated HDMI-CEC (anynet+), because ARC only works with activated CEC. Furtheremore I've connected my ~15 year old Yamaha AV Receiver over toslink with the tv. The receiver does not support DD+ and does not have any HDMI ports.
As Sound output I select "Audio Out/Optical" at the TV. If I cast Netflix to the CCU, I can select the Dolby Digital Audio Stream and everything works as it should. I also see in the TV menu under Sound => Expert Settings, that the Digital Output Audio Format "Dolby Digital" was selected, not PCM (I could manually select PCM, though).
With Stadia this will not work. After I've started a game, the connection status information show me, that 5.1 surround sound is on, but my AV receiver does not switch to Dolby Digital. In the TV menu I can't select Dolby Digital, only PCM is present.
I've tried the to force the surround sound in the app to ac3 or ac3/eac3, but this will not help. The receiver always gets only the PCM stream and thats not a Dolby Digital Surround Sound at all.
The Chromecast Ultra support Dolby Digital, e.g. in Netflix, but Stadia don't or only support other, non Dolby Codecs? I don't get it...
Thank you @JohnZoidberg
Very good explained.
In the meantime I've found this Stadia help entry [1]:
Ok, so the requirement is a eARC HDMI port at the TV. Otherwise I have no chance to get 5.1 running. Is that so?
What are the requirements for a AV receiver? If I understand you and the help page correctly, the AV receiver doesn't have the eARC HDMI port requirement. But what must a AV receiver support? Multi-Channel PCM?
Is there a more detailed documentation about the audio codecs of Stadia?
Exact same problem for me. 5.1 was working fine yesterday with my Denon AVC-X3700H. Since today I only receive PCM 2.0 when using Stadia. Usually Stadia gives me PCM 5.1.
When I check my connection it says "5.1 Surround Sound: Unsupported Device". 4K and HDR is fine.
No problems with Netfilx, which passes through DD+ just fine. So I assume the problem is within the Stadia app.
First streaming Netfilx and then switching won't work for me. When launching Stadia the signal switches back to Stereo.
Also launching the game from mobile phone and cast to CCU won't solve the problem for me. Restart also did not solve anything.
I had the same problem and I had resolved it in this mode (also for HDMI not ARC/eARC and also for Bitstream or PCM protocols):
- Configure the ChromecastUltra withthe Android app called "Google Home".
- in the same app, go to "Device Settings" and set "Surround mode" as "Audio surround AC3/HAC3".
- Reboot the Chromecast from menù with 3 dots and play a game to verify...the surround 5.1 will be active now.