Surround Sound from Youtube on Sony X90K

rakeshchn

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Fellow members, I am looking for some help to be able to enjoy 5.1 surround sound from Youtube in my 65 inch Sony X90K.

Reg my setup I have the TV hooked up to a 2011 model Yamaha AVR using eARC port (HDMI3) through OREI eARC extractor , as the AVR doesn't have eARC. This way I get DD+/DTS on all supported inbuilt apps like Hotstar, Prime Video, Plex, Bravia Core etc. Also I can successfully passthrough HD audio formats like DTS-HD and DolbyTruHD from a CoreELEC box connected directly to HDMI2 port of my TV. But when playing Youtube videos that have 5.1 surround sound using inbuilt app I get only 2 channel PCM signal to the AVR. While playing I cannot find the check box in settings to enable 5.1 audio in this TV, but I can see that in the settings of inbuilt Youtube app on my Samsung Tizen TV! I read somewhere that Android TV doesn't support 5.1 in its own Youtube app (which is very strange) and suggestion to use Smarttube app instead. So I went ahead and installed Smarttube. But sadly every thing works well in the app except the 5.1 sound:(. While playing 5.1videos I see options in the sound menu for tracks like 5.1 mp4, 5.1 eac3, 5.1 ac3 etc. But selecting them doesn't output DD or DD+, still getting 2 channel PCM.

If anyone of you have got this working in a similar setup, appreciate your help.
 
Ok so one more interesting observation is that on my cheap chinese Mecool KM9 pro "google certified" android tv box, Youtube does seem to have that 5.1 sound option and it works as expected as it outputs DD+ 5.1 signal to avr on all supported videos. Its running an even older version - Android TV 9.0 as compared to ATV 10.0 in Sony X90K. So what gives?

By the way Smartube app also works better on the mecool box compared to Sony. That is sourround sound works as expected. And also picture-in-picture works unlike Sony which only has option to run audio in background when browsing video lists.

So something off with Youtube support in general in Sony TVs?
 
There are few channels in Youtube that support 5.1 audio. Otherwise its non existent. You need to pause the video and click on settings icon to check if 5.1 surround option shows up in the settings menu and whether its on or off. If you dont see the option at all, then the TV itself doesnt support 5.1 on youtube. It does show on my old sony from 2016.

One example is this channel which supports 5.1. Again not on all its videos. Specifically on the ones it clearly declares in title.

 
1st of all dont be bothered too much abt YT 5.1,i tested many clips and it sounds horribly compressed and too low in volume. Regular 2.0 mode sounds far better upscaled to 5.1
 
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