---
title: "Sonarr Custom Formats — Quality Profile Scoping and Russian Audio"
aliases: [sonarr-custom-formats, sonarr-quality-profile, sonarr-russian-audio]
tags: [sonarr, media-stack, homelab, custom-formats, quality-profile, rutracker]
sources:
  - "daily/2026-04-29.md"
created: 2026-04-29
updated: 2026-04-29
---

# Sonarr Custom Formats — Quality Profile Scoping and Russian Audio

Sonarr's Custom Formats system assigns preference scores to releases based on regex patterns (codec, language, group, etc.). A critical and non-obvious constraint: **Custom Format scores only apply within the Quality Profile that has them enabled**. The built-in "Any" quality profile ignores all Custom Format scoring entirely, so Russian Audio preferences have no effect unless a specific Russian-targeting profile is selected per series.

## Key Points

- **Custom Formats are Quality Profile-scoped** — a format with +500 points in "Russian 1080p" has zero effect if the series uses the "Any" profile
- **"Any" profile bypasses Custom Format scoring completely** — it matches any quality without evaluating format scores
- **Russian Audio custom format** (id=1, +500 points) only fires in "Russian 1080p" or "HD - 720p/1080p" profiles — must explicitly assign one of these to each series requiring Russian audio
- **Season pack torrents create N identical queue entries** — one entry per episode in the season, all pointing to the same download; 26 entries for a 26-episode season is normal Sonarr behavior, not a bug
- **RuTracker releases often lack `[rus]` in the filename** even when the release is fully Russian-dubbed — verify actual audio tracks in Jellyfin after download completes

## Details

### Custom Format Scoring — How It Works

Custom Formats in Sonarr are regex-based rules that match against release names. Each format can be assigned a score (positive = preferred, negative = penalised) within each Quality Profile independently.

The scoring workflow:
1. Sonarr finds candidate releases for an episode/season
2. For each release, it calculates a Custom Format score by summing all matched format scores **for the active Quality Profile**
3. The release with the best combined quality + CF score wins

If the series is on the "Any" profile, step 2 produces a score of 0 for every release — no differentiation happens.

### Fixing Russian Audio Selection

To ensure Russian-dubbed releases are preferred:

1. In Sonarr → Settings → Quality Profiles — confirm "Russian 1080p" or "HD - 720p/1080p" has the Russian Audio format enabled with a high score (e.g. +500)
2. Per series: open the series → Edit → Quality Profile → change from "Any" to "Russian 1080p"
3. In Prowlarr → Indexers → set RuTracker to Priority 1 (lower number = higher priority) so it is always searched first before other indexers

### Season Pack Queue Behavior

When Sonarr downloads a season pack torrent (e.g. "Merlin S01 Complete"), it attaches the single download to all episodes in that season. In the Activity queue, this appears as one row per episode — all with identical torrent names, identical progress, identical ETA.

This is intentional: Sonarr tracks completion at the episode level. Once the torrent finishes, it renames and moves each episode file individually. Do not cancel or remove these "duplicate" queue entries — they will all resolve when the single download completes.

### RuTracker Filename Conventions

RuTracker release names for Russian dubs frequently omit audio language tags:

- `Merlin.S01.1080p.BluRay` (no `[rus]` tag) may still contain Russian audio tracks
- Some releases include multiple audio tracks (Russian + English) with no indication in the filename
- The only reliable way to confirm Russian audio: open the file in Jellyfin → inspect available audio tracks in the player

This also means Sonarr's Custom Format regex matching on `\brus\b` or `russian` in the filename will not always fire for genuine Russian releases — the +500 score boost works by finding RuTracker releases (via Prowlarr indexer priority) rather than filename matching.

## Related Concepts

- [[wiki/concepts/prowlarr-flaresolverr-limitation]] — RuTracker cookie injection workaround; Prowlarr priority configuration for RuTracker
- [[wiki/concepts/jellyfin-tmdb-thetvdb-plugin]] — Jellyfin audio track inspection, TMDb vs TheTVDB plugin behavior, S01E01 naming conventions
- [[wiki/homelab/_index]] — media stack overview: Prowlarr → Sonarr → qBittorrent → Jellyfin pipeline

## Sources

- [[daily/2026-04-29.md]] — Sonarr session: "Russian Audio" Custom Format id=1 confirmed +500 but inactive on "Any" profile; RuTracker set to priority 1 in Prowlarr; Merlin Season 2 downloading at 4.2 MB/s, Season 1 stalled at 0 seeders; season pack queue behavior observed
