can we please get dts hd and dts x it is 2022 afterall

Not sure who you are referring to as “you” here. None of my posts indicate I was in any way misled or surprised to learn of the lack of DTS-HD and DTS:X support on my Arc after I bought it. In fact, for me, I only made the decision to buy the Arc once it was clear there was going to at least be support for LPCM.  As for UHD players sold last year, sure, it is a shrinking market.  But focusing only on last year sales fails to acknowledge the existing installed base of all the players still in use.  And maybe that is still a small portion of the Sonos customer base.  Got it.  But it certainly includes me.

Btw, your points, which are valid, were previously also raised by others, and yet Sonos reversed its decision to not provide any support for DTS by later adding support for basic DTS.  What changed?  Well, customers requested it.  Whether Sonos ever provides support for DTS-HD and DTS:X is obviously up to them.  Maybe it’s just not worth the cost to them.  Maybe they will add it.  But its hardly an unreasonable suggestion in terms of a feature request for a sound bar.

Yeah I wonder if years from now. DTS will have a comeback and dominate the market like Dolby is currently doing. Then we'll have tvs that only have DTS. 

I actually wonder what the next step is after streaming. Because the thing is with buying physical media, it can often be more of an experience. & releases are often loaded with extras. And if you have your favourite movies on the shelf anytime you want to reach for them they are there. I totally understand having the space though to store them can be problematic. It's why about a year ago I had a clear out and made decisions to only collect movies I would rewatch. Apologies for getting off subject

There is also the dev and maintenance costs associated with supportting another format.  You could argue that that is less of a concern for a product that doesn’t provide firmware updates than one that does.  However, since Sonos did eventually adopt DTS, it does seem that licensing was the bigger hurdle to overcome.

I do wonder sometimes if Sonos doesn’t adopt a standard because they don’t think it presents their product in the best light, at least currently.  That was the case with bluetooth audio I think.  You could argue that Apple often takes a similar stance, such as having their own Lightning cable rather than following the standard USB.  Apple tends to be praised more for it, as a lot of people trust them, and the have more control over markets.

I don’t think we’re there yet.  And I suspect streaming services will start offering 8k video before they start offering uncompressed audio.  Just feels like that would draw in more customers, even if it may not actually be as beneficial to customers.  It’s a ways away though as I don’t think gigabit service to homes has nearly the penetration needed for this to make sense, nor do I think streaming services are looking to compete with this sort of offering.  We are seeing that sort of competition with music streaming services because they essentially have the same content, and  higher quality is the only way they really can compete.

I don’t think the upcoming generation has any real concept or need to buy physical media.  They honestly don’t even really have much of a concept of owning media.  It’s all subscription service to them.  Maybe trends will go back to owning your own digital copy again, if subscription prices get out of control, leading to piracy, leading publishers to look at cheaper a la carte options.  But maybe not.   I do think that eventually, we will move away from the ‘cloud computing’ trend and homes will start having local servers.  I can see a setup where you still have subscription services, but instead of getting the content from a cloud server, you’re getting it from your own home server, that gets updated from the cloud and a much less frequent basis.  Subscription service lowers cost and you get a little more privacy, plus whatever local smart home processing you need.  But that’s a guess.  It does feel like we cycle between local processing and cloud/server processing as time goes by. 

So many people arguing some dumb stuff.

To say Movie’s aren’t even coming out in DTS-HD / X anymore is ignorant.

You can pre-order movies now that only have a DTS track, because they are a re-release into 4k an they chose not to bring the audio to TrueHD.

So movies are coming out quite regularly in DTS HD and DTS X format.  Doesn’t matter if ‘new’ movies are TrueHD, how are people going to enjoy their Alien 4k movie that’s in DTS:X? Just going to skip the spatial audio and listen to LPCM?

In the case of DTS-HD converting to LPCM is fine because it’s 100% the same data (but decoded by the player), however DTS:X is still a spatial audio used (that won’t translate in LPCM) - and any 4k already re-released in DTS is unlikely to get another release in TrueHD… 

During the DTS era, yes there were some movies converted from DTS-HD-MA to a DTS:X in like a re-release.  DTS is still present, and some movies are still dropping with it - so it’s not infeasible they could still make new DTS:X - but I would think they’ll just shift to TrueHD at that point.

Really the issue here is, not every movie we or anyone wants to see came out 2021 and newer only, some movies may not get a 4k re-release, or even a new blu-ray with TrueHD. - and Sonos continues to offer no DTS-HD or DTS:X licensing to watch some of our old favorites -- then we may never get to appreciate it… Harry Potter? Who knows if they’ll drop an Atmos version - but it’s in DTS:X and the last collection released was in 2021….

I have ripped BluRay disks from my personal library including Atmos, DTS-HD and DTS-X which I play from my Nvidia Shield Pro 2019 using a Sonos Arc, Sub, and 2x surround One speakers. I do not have a working BluRay player, hence the Shield.

Dolby Atmos files sound brilliant, punchy, immersive.

DTS-HD/DTS-X passed through as Multichannel PCM 5.1 sound comparatively nowhere near as good as Atmos files. Lacklustre, and the volume needs to be increased to 90% (!!) on the Arc for borderline satisfactory results.

I am extremely irritated that Sonos have not included all modern codecs, and though I love what the soundbar does do well, poor business decisions by Sonos limit the full potential of this home theatre setup in many use cases. This is a premium product and should have such features if only by principle - the system I own is being sold at 2300 euros - there are soundbars out there for 300 pounds which support DTS lossless codecs!!

I am a Sonos fanboy usually, but this is poor. I haven’t said anything that someone hasn’t said before, but it’s important to make your voice heard.

I would be happier paying to use the codecs as a one-off purchase model, as long as the option is there!! Not that I would be happy with this, but it would be better than dropping 250 pounds on a HDFury Arcana, for example.

@Corry P

Thank you for this considered response. I am aware that different media management apps will manage these codecs with varying degrees of success - I am using Kodi for playback. With my current settings, I was aiming to have Kodi processing DTS-HD / DTS-X codecs into LPCM 5.1, but playing these results in the Sonos app saying I am getting Multichannel PCM 5.1 through. To be honest I am fairly new to this, and I’m not even sure if LPCM 5.1 is the same thing as Multichannel PCM 5.1 even after a little bit of research 😅

I will try running these same files through Emby/Plex and seeing what the result is, that does seems sensible. Kodi can be temperamental a lot of the time.

The difference between lossy Dolby Digital(+) and lossless Dolby Atmos / DTS-HD is night and day to me, and I would really appreciate these being more plug and play rather than fiddling around with Shield, choice of playback app, and Sonos settings. My TV can passthrough DTS no problem, to be honest I have become confused over which settings in the Shield to enable or disable (i.e Dolby sound processing, Kodi passthrough, Kodi 2.0/5.1 channels etc) and it just seems as though the Arc supporting the codecs makes more sense in the long-run, or to purchase a different system that natively supports the codecs.

I did not know about remuxing audio files into supported formats! This is very interesting information to know and I will be doing some looking into this. :)

I’m curious. Would you pay for the mentioned codecs and if so, how much? What if it was a monthly subscription?

I’m thinking that if there was a suggestion that people might be happy to pay for these additional codecs, then perhaps Sonos might go onto introduce these things as there is probably a licence fee attached to them for their use.

So is multi channel pcm exactly the same & It just doesn't say DTS on the app? Or is it different without the proper DTS codec?

From what I think I understand so far, LPCM or multichannel PCM 5.1 or or 7.1 surround sound playback will sound as good as DTS or DTS:HD. Both process full surround sound up to 8 channels or 7.1.

https://www.the-home-cinema-guide.com/blu-ray-audio-codecs-explained.html

My current question/investigation is around passing LPCM from DTS:X (spacial/object-based sound like Dolby Atmos) from 4K UHD Discs. Does DTS:X object-based/height speaker data layer pass through LPCM?

Apparently Dolby Atmos height speaker effect/data will not pass through LPCM but not a problem since the Sonos ARC processes Dolby Atmos fully to include the two front ARC height speakers.

However, from what I read, the main difference between Dolby Atmos and DTS:X is that you can experience DTS:X using a conventional 5.1 or 7.1 speaker system. 

When I pass LPCM from DTS:X 4K UHD Blu-ray to the Arc 5.1.2, I think I hear the spacial/object-based effect, but so far haven't been able to isolate specific sounds coming from the height speakers with the DTS:X content I've tried so far passed through as LPCM.