Beam and S2 - any plans for additional codec support?

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S2 is on the horizon and there is talk of support for HD audio - are there any plans to add support for Dolby Digital Plus, LPCM and even DTS over the Beam's HDMI ARC?

It would resolve a lot of long standing issues enabling surround audio with certain Chromecast apps and other devices...

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D Unit

Lyricist I

I am eagerly awaiting any news on this, the Beam really should support Dolby Digital Plus…….

Airgetlam

We really won’t know until they release more information about S2. Since that has to be released before anyone receives the new speakers, it shouldn’t be too much longer to wait.

But then again, I expect that all new features that could be will be in the first release of S2. It’s entirely possible that the team has their hands full with X number of features to fit in the first release, and other features will filter out as they have time to work on them. So it’s entirely possible that some things we want from S2 won’t be in the first release. Making the additional information still to be released even more enticing :)

Bruce

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Tejs Dyrvig Ernst

I asked about updated support for the Amp and Beam when the Arc was released.

Got the standard answer that there were no news to share and that my interest would be shared with the team.

We can hope for an upgrade but to me it would be strange not to mention upcoming support with Yesterday’s launch and the news of Sonos finally embracing Dolby Digital Plus and Atmos on the Arc.

It would be a real shame if the Sonos Amp and Beam are not upgraded to Dolby Digital Plus. Way to soon to start neglecting such new products, especially the Amp. And if there are hardware limitations that is simply poor design as DD Plus was very much a thing when both products were launched.

Unfortunately, based on Sonos’ track record of never updating the support on the Playbar and Playbase with DTS and still not having updated the Beam with DD Plus I would not get my hopes up.

Airgetlam

There’s two issues you have to think about here. One is the ability of the carrier. Optical, of course, is bandwidth limited, and can’t carry many of these codecs. But the other aspect would be software. I’d think it unusual that if the software running on the Arc can accept Dolby Digital Plus, that the same software wouldn’t run on the Beam, assuming both are running S2, and the connection method is not optical.

But that’s speculation on my part. We’ll certainly see soon, when Sonos releases more information about the S2 software. Of course, anyone sticking with S1 will definitely get what they have right now.

Bruce

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Lalligator

Lyricist III

ARC can’t support multichannel PCM (or, say, TrueHD), you need eARC for that, and generally an ARC device can’t be upgraded to eARC with a simple firmware change, you need to also update the hardware.

There really is no excuse at all for not supporting multichannel on the Arc, and a rather flimsy one for not supporting DTS, though.

Vahe

Lyricist III

So there is a chance that the S2 update to Beam will give it Dolby Atoms capability?

Otherwise, is there an upgrade program- to send in the current Beam and get the Arc at a discount for the price difference?

Vahe S.

jgatie

So there is a chance that the S2 update to Beam will give it Dolby Atoms capability?

Otherwise, is there an upgrade program- to send in the current Beam and get the Arc at a discount for the price difference?

The Beam has no upfiring speakers. Even if it could decode Atmos, it has no way of playing it properly.

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Tejs Dyrvig Ernst

So there is a chance that the S2 update to Beam will give it Dolby Atoms capability?

Otherwise, is there an upgrade program- to send in the current Beam and get the Arc at a discount for the price difference?

And there will definitely not be an upgrade-program.

The current upgrade-program are for the few, very old products, which will not be able to support the General S2 update and thus will no longer function together with a modern Sonos-system.

The Beam still does everything it was advertised to do and even if it’s not updated with new codecs (e.g. Dolby Digital Plus) it is still very much capable of being updated to S2 and functioning alongside the Arc and any other new products coming in the near future. I for one hope that Sonos will bring Dolby Digital Plus to the Beam and the Amp given their fairly recent release-dates but I am rather skeptical.

And for the avoidance of doubt, I wouldn’t be expecting any hardware updates in the near future either. Most likely any hardware update is still some years to come.