Beam and Samsung Blu-Ray, DD 5.1 but not 2.0

Hi @sir_nose.

Thanks for reaching out and welcome to the community!

I appreciate your detailed post outlining the issue as well as the troubleshooting steps that you did, let me help and try to figure this out.

Blu-ray discs commonly use the DTS audio format which is not supported by Sonos.

Some Blu-ray players and game consoles have the ability to transcode DTS into a format that Sonos supports, such as Dolby Digital 5.1.

Here are the Sonos supported audio formats:

• Dolby Digital 5.1
• PCM
• Stereo

I suggest that first, you may need to consult your Blu-ray player’s manual or manufacturer for specific instructions and settings because your  Sonos speaker is just basically receiving the provided audio signal from the source device.

Let us know if you have any other questions or concerns, we are always here to help.

Thanks @Annazel S. It looks like the answer then is that even if the Blu-Ray player could/was transcoding to DD 2.0, the Beam wouldn’t support it.

One more additional question then - with this set-up, if I upgraded to Arc over Beam, would the Samsung then be able to transcode DTS do DD+, or is straight DD the best I can hope for, even with Arc? 

If your source material contains stereo audio, that is 2 channel audio only, no amount of processing can generate new channels out of them. There is no benefit to Dolby Digital Plus over “plain” stereo in this case. 
 

There is a Dolby stereo format, from the early days of cinema. It is a way to represent multiple channels (surround sound) into two separate channels. Think of it as a method to include some surround sound information in stereo tracks, at the expense of sound quality. However, no format in the world can add surround sound to a true stereo mix.  
 

In your case, there would be no benefit to Arc over Beam in terms of supported sound formats. Arc supports additional formats (more channels) and has more speakers and better stereo separation. However, it won’t be able to generate sound that isn’t there. 

Some more information: I looked at the manual for your blu-ray player. See page 53 (available here). As you can see under ‘*’, if the source does not contain surround information, the output will be 2 channel PCM (stereo). 

Thanks @oriboaz. When I was asking about the Arc, I was asking about the transcoding from DTS 5.1 (sorry, should have been more clear). So while I can now get DD 5.1 from a Blu-Ray with DTS 5.1, if I replaced the Beam with an Arc, would that same BR with DTS 5.1 now come through the Arc at DD+ 5.1?

There would be no benefit of DD+ in this case compared to “regular” DD 5.1. Therefore, what Arc will see is this same DD5.1 as Beam. 
 

However: in the future, Arc will support multichannel LPCM. This is a lossless format (highest fidelity). If your TV has eARC, then it could transfer multichannel LPCM to Sonos Arc. This is not possible over regular HDMI ARC. If your TV is more than 2 years old, then it likely does not have eARC. 

Note: HDFury Arcana can split audio and video, allowing Arc to receive the best quality audio, even if your TV does not have eARC.