Roku device that supports multichannel PCM streams?

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somethingcleveridunno

Steven Wilson 5.1 mix of "Plastic Love" when?
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Feb 2, 2023
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In an existential crisis
The "why?" is that I got my parents comfortable with using Roku, and Plex. I really don't want to upset that if I don't have to. Have lifetime Plex pass, wish they'd incorporate gapless playback into the Roku app for passholders, but I digress...

Last week I got their living room, already set up with dual stereo speakers, upgraded with a secondhand Pioneer 5.1 receiver from Goodwill and a scrounged center channel.

I've got my surround music library shared over Plex, almost exclusively ripped to multichannel PCM, to share with them. And the damn Roku stick won't play the surround channels. I've tracked it down to just being a hard limitation of the old 1080p streaming stick. But, Roku's shit about publishing such granular specs about their own devices, and finding third-party devices that support it would be pouring through a ton of models from a ton of brands.

So, hoping someone here knows a device, be it a streaming stick, or a Blu Ray player, that uses Roku, and can pass multichannel PCM to the receiver, and hopefully doesn't cost more than the rest of the surround setup. Otherwise I'm going to end up having to try to set up a Raspberry Pi with an OS they can operate solely from a small remote from the couch. And it's kind of hard just getting them comfortable switching inputs between the Roku stick and the Blu Ray player I found them at Goodwill to watch/listen to discs.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Just to clarify, the receiver takes Dolby Digital Plus and DTS HD: Master Audio streams from the Roku just fine, including from my Plex server. It's simply kneecapped from passing along multichannel PCM, even though the Plex software and the receiver both support it. Only option I would have with this device would be to transcode my library to DTS and I really don't want to do that.

So I'm looking for a Roku device someone can tell me passes along multichannel PCM.
 
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I think user timbre4 posted about this HDMI to Analog out device. It might work for you.

eBay link

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@somethingcleveridunno

Out of interest... Have you tried streaming other multi-channel audio formats from the Roku, such as: FLAC or lossy audio formats such as: LC-AAC, HE-AAC, Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital Plus?
Works with everything Dolby and DTS that came before Atmos and DTS:X. Haven't tried lossy formats because of lack of interest in them.
 
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