Yeah, unfortunately all my settings are correct. In V3 and V4 you can adjust/enable to NVR's ability to record audio from the camera under the Encode menu. There was a checkbox to enable/disable audio saving as well as audio bitrate selections. In this version 4 update, you need to select "more" button under the main stream options, and a window pops up that allows you to select sampling frequency and compression. For the Dahua branded cams i have there is also a "audio" checkbox, for the Hikvision (onvif) cam, there is no audio checkbox. And yes, i have insured that all audio features are enabled in the cams. The cam internal settings have not been changed at all.
In V3, if i recall, the audio selection checkbox was always available for all cams even if they didn't stream audio at all. Hopefully Dahua can checkout whats goin on and solve this mystery. I do plan to swap over the Hikvision cams to the new Dahua
IPC-T5442T-ZE so i can get back my smart search features for those channels. But i would still like to get some life out of these 3x 1yr old $400+ hikvisions.
Really wierd thing is, i also have a wifi
doorbell cam, and i was able to setup the NVR to record the network stream of the camera. It is also recording audio, and is also working in this V4 update. Honestly its the last cam on the system i expected to have audio working as i consider it a "non-important" video feed.