Dolby Atmos on Apple Music with Apple TV 4K & Sonos Arc

Dolby Atmos does show on the ‘now playing’ screen in the Apple Music App with it set to "Always on" - and yes it will play on the Arc (shown simply as Airplay in the S2 App), but you only have to slide the Arc ‘height audio’ slider bar back and forth to see that it makes no difference at all - so my guess is the audio is down-sampled to non-atmos CD/DVD stereo audio quality, so probably at 16-Bit/44.1 kHz or maybe 24-Bit/48 kHz. I don’t think it’s working for Atmos (not yet, at least)… but maybe it will one day, hopefully.

Maybe. But it sounds like Dolby Atmos if you switch between Always on and Off in Settings. 

I have tried last night after updating my iPad to IOS14.6, Airplay a track from it to my Sonos Arc setup… sounds very different to that I played via Apple TV 4K. The latter is much better. I think the DA symbol shown on the Apple Music app of the IOS devices just means that the track playing on that device is in Dolby Atmos… Whether we are getting Dolby Atmos from the Sonos setup we shall refer to what is showing on the Sonos app...

I can’t get it to play in Dolby Atmos. I’ve tried both suggestions in the thread, through the music app on ATV 4K, and airplay and neither way say they are playing in Atmos in the Sonos app. Both are stereo PCM. Can anymore confirm the Sonos app says it’s playing in Atmos when playing in the ATV 4K app or airplay? 

@sonosone What model TV do you have? Is it equipped with HDMI eARC?

@GuitarSuperstar I have an LG CX77 with an Arc connected to the eARC input through HDMI. Dolby Atmos works on other apps so I know it’s not my setup. 

So you’re getting Dolby Atmos from other apps on your Apple TV 4K? My LG TV is an 2018 model and only with HDMI ARC but got DD+ Dolby Atmos.

AirPlay doesn’t support Dolby Atmos audio. You can only get Atmos music directly through the Apple Music app on the Apple TV 4K.

On the Apple TV 4K, go to Settings > Apps > Music and set Dolby Atmos to Automatic and Audio Quality to Lossless.

Yep, I already tried those settings in the ATV app. Like I mentioned in the first post, I tried both methods to see if I could get it to work and both say it’s playing in stereo PCM. I’m curious if anyone can actually confirm this is working? Does your Sonos app say it’s playing in Atmos? There are people claiming it sounds better which can sometimes be a subjective thing. The ATV app can say the song is lossless and playing in Dolby Atmos but if the Sonos app does not display the Dolby Atmos symbol that means something is causing it to get converted to stereo PCM. 
 

I’m skeptical this is actually working for anyone, but I would love to see some proof that it is. Since Dolby Atmos works fine on all the other apps that support it, my hunch is there is something that still needs to be updated on either Sonos or Apples side?

@sonosone I can confirm that Spatial Audio/Dolby Atmos music from the Apple Music app on the Apple TV 4K plays in Dolby Atmos on my Sonos Arc. The Sonos app confirms this because it displays the Dolby Atmos logo on the Now Playing screen.

I have been listening to Spatial Audio music the last two days from Apple Music and it sounds great. There is a noticeable difference when you listen to an Atmos mix of a song, especially from the height channels.

Do you have tvOS 14.6 installed? What songs have you tested?