diff --git a/salt/payload.py b/salt/payload.py
index 7c5e347e0cc..781eac0b499 100644
--- a/salt/payload.py
+++ b/salt/payload.py
@@ -148,7 +148,10 @@ class Serial(object):
                 # that under Python 2 we can still work with older versions
                 # of msgpack.
                 if msgpack.version >= (0, 5, 2):
-                    loads_kwargs['raw'] = False
+                    if encoding is None:
+                        loads_kwargs['raw'] = True
+                    else:
+                        loads_kwargs['raw'] = False
                 else:
                     loads_kwargs['encoding'] = encoding
                 try: