C'mon Sonos, be "humble enough to listen to customers" (as your CEO put it https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/sonos-patrick-spence-listening-customers-era-100-era-300/) and make this tiny change that will impact so many of your customers

They seem quite deaf on this argument, In time they will loose customers.

Lol, no need for the hostility. They added DTS cause the license was literally free

Of course it sounds good.  Multichannel PCM is just the decoded DTS, so it will sound iexactly as it would if Sonos supported DTS.

I was specifically addressing someone who got rid of all of their DTS discs because of Sonos. This is completely unnecessary. All of my DTS discs sound great on my Arc + Sub + Era 300s setup.

But since you brought it up, I have been a Sonos customer since 2017 and have been active on this community forum for a few years. Overall, I have been very pleased with Sonos and the way they have responded to issues/complaints that customers have. My Sonos devices sound better today than they did the day I purchased them. And they continue to improve with every update because of the improvements and added features that Sonos implements based on the customer feedback from these forums.

Hi @mikeh97 

Which playback app are you using? I happen to have a Shield too, and I normally use Emby to play movies, which will transcode DTS-HD to Dolby Digital 5.1 as I play. I have noticed, however, that if I play the same movie with the same audio track via Plex instead of Emby, Plex will in fact do the sensible thing and pull the DTS core from the DTS-HD stream and pass that through to my Sonos Amp. In the Sonos app, I now see DTS playing instead of Dolby Digital. This is because DTS-HD contains a standard DTS track which is then fleshed out with additional data to increase the quality, and this standard DTS core is therefore available - with the correct handling - to be played on Sonos devices.

I did have to manually set my output formats in the Android settings for the Shield to include DTS, and also set the Plex playback app to Passthrough audio. Please note that it also relies on the TV supporting DTS passthrough - not all TVs will, and I bought my specific TV because I knew it would support DTS.

I don’t quite understand why you are getting Multichannel PCM though - if I play an unsupported format, the Shield transcodes it to Dolby Digital and I have no relative volume issues (except with True-HD, but I expect that).

Of course, if you have movie files and a computer, you could manually re-encode your unsupported formats into supported formats and include these in a remuxing of the MKV or MP4 file, including volume boosts if needed. It’s more work, certainly, but I have done it myself on occasion. Multiple free software tools are available.

I hope this helps.

Hi @mikeh97 

Kodi! I used to use that for years, but not in the time that I have been using Sonos for TV audio, and not since I got my Shield. Therefore, I can’t really help with the settings there - it would be from memory at best, and none of my memory includes getting it to work with Sonos.

Both Plex and Emby (and Jellyfin, for that matter) are similar to Kodi, and yet different. Their main functional difference is that you can access them via the cloud, and therefore do not need to be on the same network. Each requires an install of both an app to play, and server software to do the behind-the-scenes work. Plex comes pre-installed on the Shield, so you should already have it. You will need to set it up via a browser, however - not via the app. Their website has instructions.

LPCM is the same thing as Multichannel PCM (sometimes referred to as McLPCM). It is what all formats will eventually be decompressed to for internal processing and playback, and utilises no compression whatsoever - this is why it’s not usually used as a transport method, as the bandwidth needed is the highest possible.

The difficulty with Atmos is that the entire chain must support it - starting with the source media, the player (and the app, in the case of Shield), the TV and the sound device. This makes plug-and-play more challenging, but it usually works. Shield is rather an unusual playback device - as compared to BluRay players, anyway - but it does have useful configuration options. Personally, I turned off automatic audio format selection and then ticked all the formats that my Amp supports - Dolby Digital and DTS. For the Arc, you can of course include DD+, DD+ Atmos and True-HD (Atmos MAT) too. I have “Dolby audio processing” enabled to allow transcoding of unsupported formats, but with Plex extracting DTS from DTS-HD, there aren’t many formats left!

I can give you a couple of pointers for remuxing, but please note that Sonos - nor I - can take any responsibility for any harm caused by any third-party software that I may suggest. With that out of the way, I use mkvtoolnix to manipulate mkv files, and mediacoder to transcode. The first Google Search results for each are the official sites - I don’t recommend downloading them from anywhere else. You will need plenty of disk space (at least 2x the size of the source file, probably 3x if you recode the video too) to remux files - that could easily add up to 100GB. Once done, you can delete all but the final, resulting file, though.

I hope this helps.

It would be a brave product manager who proposed a project, with significant opportunity costs, in the hope that an unknown fraction of a fraction of the users would subscribe and deliver some incremental revenue -- using, I might add, a new business model -- to cover it.

The general philosophy at Sonos appears to be that physical formats are heading the way of the dodo, and that streaming will dominate.

Well, even with a bluray player that won’t work - unless you hook your bluray player directly into you Sonos I guess. But with newer TV’s and using ARC/eARC and connecting your bluray player to your TV: that won’t work because the TV’s don’t support DTS(all) passthrough anymore.

I think that is silly btw - I would love it if TV’s would continue to support it, and if Sonos would support it too. But unfortunately as you see with Sonos & LG/Samsung it seems DTS support is being dropped with everything (or never being added).

i have a hdfury vrroom device you see that would allow me to pass the audio regardless of my tv brand but only thing holding me back is the sonos arcs inability to support it

“it is 2022 afterall”

The fact that it is 2022 is actually a good reason NOT to offer DTS support. Today, most people are moving away from physical media and are only using streaming services. DTS audio is pretty much non-existent on popular streaming services.
 

I actually prefer Blu-ray discs over streaming so I would love to see DTS-HD and DTS:X supported by Sonos. But I am also pretty content with just setting my Blu-ray player to convert DTS to PCM. I think lossless multichannel PCM audio sounds great from my DTS-encoded discs. And I doubt most people would even be able to tell the difference between DTS-HD Master Audio and multichannel PCM.

There is a good reason for this… and it isn’t because of “laziness”.

yeah and the reason is because customers asked for it thats the reason, so sonos decided to go half measure and add dts when they could have added the whole dts range which is where the laziness part comes from

Just curious… if lossless DTS support is so important to you, why did you invest in a system that doesn’t support it?

FWIW putting together a few DTS: X Blu-rays so I can compare DTS: X on the HT-A9 with Sonos in a few days. I just bought a 4K UHD DTS: X Blu-ray called “Lone Survivor” w/ Mark Wahlberg and tried it out on the Sonos 5.1.2 via LCPM 7.1 pass through. This Blu-ray sounds terrific on the Sonos 5.1.2. Lots of room filling dynamic sound and some good helicopters demos throughout too.* It’s a bloody war movie with many F-Bombs so not for children to hear or see. Very curious how this will sound with true DTS: X on the HT-A9 compared to the Sonos 5.1.2. But if you want to rock your Sonos 5.1.2 with a $15 Blu-ray...“Lone Survivor”

really appreciate that thank you

Thanks @Corry P!

Why did you buy sonos knowing full well it doesn’t support these formats ? If you really wanted DTS-HD you could have got any number of sound bars or any number of receivers that do . The percentage of people still using physical disks or Plex is declining so why would a company spend millions implementing a format that a very small percentage use .  I know I’m harsh but here are some numbers I just looked up. 
Just in the US alone Netflix has almost 75 million subscribers . Units of UHD players sold last year is not even 500k . Then how many of those players will be used with a sonos arc or beam ? Very very small percentage . 

Hello,

I would assume if DTS-HD content is not interpreted by the Beam or the Arc, DTS core content should be played instead now that both are DTS compatible, shouldn’t it?

HI Corry,

Thanks for raising this issue. Any updates from the teams?

Very interested in your views comparing between the ARC and the HT-A9, have you gone for the SA-SW5 as well?.

Would also love to know your experiences with the Sony system - looking for something that can handle DTS-HD/Master

There is a helpful comparison and review here of the Sonos Arc vs the Sony HT-A9:

https://www.rtings.com/soundbar/tools/compare/sonos-arc-vs-sony-ht-a9/13760/27047

I did think the HT-A9 was having audio dropout issues, so you may want to research that further too before making a purchase decision?

https://us.community.sony.com/s/question/0D54O00007AcFZJSA3/hta9-dropouts

Thanks for posting both of these, super helpful. The issue is that almost all of my Blu-Ray collection is DTS-HD or up, so even if Sonos rates slightly higher, I’m missing out on a whole realm by not putting everything up on Craigslist and moving on. 

If you’re luck is like mine, whats the betting that Sonos go onto support those codecs just after your decision to move on too.. ha ha

…but yes if your Blu-ray collection is the driving force right now, I guess there’s no point waiting and missing out on the way you prefer to watch/listen to your collection. Hope it all pans out for you.