NVIDIA Shield 2019 USB audio passthrough issue acknowledged by company, fix coming soon

Since the turn of the month, NVIDIA has been quite occupied with fixing various bugs on its Android-powered Shield TV set-top boxes.

It all started with a hotfix to address the Match Content Color Space for the Shield TV 2019 models. Soon after, legacy Shield TVs picked up an update to address HD audio dropouts.

While addressing some of these issues, some other bugs also popped up, among them freezing issue while writing to external hard disk, Kodi crashing playback, and even the disappearing BBC iPlayer and ITV Hub apps.

We’ve also highlighted NVIDIA Shield TV Disney+ issues related to Dolby Atmos, compatibility, playing 4K content, and casting, all of which have been acknowledged and their fixes promised.

Last week, we cautioned about updating to the latest firmware available for the NVIDIA Shield 2019 after it was determined that it’s the culprit for the issue with Dolby Vision on Vizio P TVs.

It has also been revealed that the latest Plex update is breaking external storage network sharing on NVIDIA Shield, but a fix is coming soon. Another fix that is also on its way will address the NVIDIA Shield USB audio passthrough issue that has been affecting some users, the company has confirmed.

Hi, I have a 2019 Shield TV and I’m having trouble getting 5.1 channel Dolby Digital & DTS output via a USB soune card. I’m now on my second card, this one a Vantec NBA-200U USB External 7.1 Channel Audio Adapter. I bought this one after the first failed to produce 5.1 output. It was recommended on these forums by Nvidia as being compatible. If I use pass-through direct from my TV, I get only 2 channel sound and if I use the sound card I either get nothing or 2 channel sound. When using the card Kodi doesn’t see any pass-through capable devices.
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In response, the NVIDIA team assured that a fix for this issue is coming soon, citing the current Kodi and Shield images as the culprits.

Kodi and the current shield images have an issue with passthrough that will be fixed in the near future.

In another detailed explanation, the company says the update from Android Oreo to Pie is the culprit for the NVIDIA Shield USB audio passthrough issue and while fixes are ready, they could take some time to arrive.

In the statement, NVIDIA has also shed some light on a couple more bugs affecting their Shield TVs, also confirming that their fixes are coming soon.

A quick update here on issues in 8.0 with USB dac configurations:
1. Changes in android P caused passthrough not to work on multiple apps. The primary issue here was on our side and we have fixes in place for it which will go into our next release. Our changes got Plex up and running but Kodi still had issues. The changes in android exposed an issue in Kodi which the Kodi team needed to fix. We recevied a test build yesterday from them and when combined with our changes, passthrough is now working on SHIELD on Plex and Kodi.

2. Changes in android P broke configs using both an audio dac and a camera with a mic input. We have a fix for this which is mostly working but needs some final polish. This build will be tested with Apothegm when the last remaining issue with it is fixed.

3. Sanskrit 10th dac not working. A 10s timeout was added and Android P and on this dac, it has so many formats that the 10s timeout happens while enumerating the dac. This will be fixed in our next release.

4. These items aren’t done yet and won’t happen in the next release, but will happen hopefully in the release after. We will add the ability to set Fixed output for the DAC volume and also enable volume control via accessories if your DAC is connected to a receiver on SHIELD.
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NVIDIA notes that the above fixes won’t necessarily be released as part of the next software update, but they should eventually arrive on the affected Shield TVs.

NOTE: For more NVIDIA-related stuff, check out this section.

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