Dolby Atmos

AppleTV 4K which is the one that will support Atmos with the TVOS update does not have an optical out. So without new kit from Sonos it is not going to work. Passing the signal via a receiver won’t yield a hi res sound with the number of channels in a manner which sonos can distribute. Sonos need to up their game or be left behind. I have my fingers crossed.

Saying that SONOS isn’t home theater is odd. They make a play bar specifically to sit under the tv. Maybe my idea of home theater is naive but the fact that atmos currently requires hdmi is more relevant than anyone’s opinion

They sell the playbar as a device that is simply better than your tv speakers, it's not advertised as a all in one home theatre package and if you read the description for the playbar, the ability to stream music and mentioned far more than the ability to do surround sound - it's obvious while the playbar is capable of doing 5.1 sound (when you add the rears and sub) - it's only marketed as a better speaker than the ones in your tv and by the way, it streams music and it can play music with the other wireless sonos speakers in other rooms

However Sonos do need to up their game, some TV's with built in speakers are now starting to do 5.1 and they can decode Dolby True HD etc, so technically some TV's with built in speakers are producing higher quality sound than Sonos so Sonos saying that the PLaybar is better than your TV's speakers may not be true anymore unless they up their game with a new product

I believe I’ve read that Dolby Atmos can’t be transmitted across an optical connection, as well.

You are wrong. Here is the product description:
"The home theater sound bar and music player in one." No where do they say, "we sell it as a device that is simply better than your TV speakers." If you actually care to go read it yourself, you will see that it says "home theater" device AND streams music, too. Check you facts please, before spouting off false statements. The speakers do natively fire in an upwards direction, more at an angle, so there's no saying they cannot update firmware to work with Apple 4K with Atmos. May not be as good as others with original design elements for Atmos, but not too say it will never happen. Play One can be mounted to fire up, too.

No Sonos hardware can accept an ATMOS signal, as it cannot be carried over optical, it requires HDMI.

Now that Apple TV will support ATMOS couldn't it handle the ATMOS processing and output to the soundbar?

No that won't be possible with the current playbar

The Playbar does not have any height channel speakers - even if your playbar could decode Atmos, it would sound exactly the same as normal 5.1 because there are no height channel tweeters facing the ceiling - basically the height channel in the Atmos signal would just get cut off and it would just output 5.1.0 instead of 5.1.2

The only real difference is that Atmos signal would be a higher bitrate so the sound quality may sound slightly better to your ears because Dolby Digital is a lossy format while Atmos is lossless but that's it and only real audiophiles can tell the difference between lossy and lossless sound anyway, the average person cannot

You hit the nail on the head there. It would sound exactly the same as normal 5.1. Thats exactly what I want. Because the alternative is hearing stereo.

You see most modern ultra-hd bluray releases don't add a Dolby Digital sound track anymore. Only Atmos, or DTS, or stereo. So with any Sonos home cinema set, you are either hearing stereo or nothing or you need an expensive transcoding bluray player or something to get 5.1.

I'm not interested in a 7.1 setup. I want my Sonos 5.1 setup to be able to play ALL forms of audio codec I throw at it. Ragnarock Ultra-HD bluray release? can't watch it no sound. Planet Earth II. Can only watch it in stereo. You get my point?

Sonos is turning into a huge disappointment. I was waiting for the announcement of the new sound bar in the hope that it would have a HDMI connection to facilitate newer specs like atmos and get rid of my requirement for optical switches, or resorting to playing movies on my PS3 rather than PS4 just to get DD5.1.
I don't want stereo, I want Atmos or DD5.1.
I don't want "unsupported" coming up on my About page. I want Atmos or DD5.1.
Beam comes along. What do we get?
Alexa......
...... Really?
We get ARC HDMI, great, any additional decoding for DTS, DTS-HD, Atmos etc?......... no.
"Play everything that matters to you" they say.
What they mean is, "Play everything that matters to you as long as it also matters to us."
"Create a home cinema system when you wirelessly connect a pair of rear speakers and a Sub to your Beam", they say.
They mean, "Create a poor home cinema system..."
They then sign all this off with, "The wireless home sound system that gets better over time."
What kind of time frame are we talking about here? The same timeframe for plate tectonics, perhaps?
Cos I've had my soundbar for years, and we've since had the playbase and now beam. All either stereo or a very temperamental DD5.1.
Mine hasn't got better over time at all.
Time to ditch sonos and go where the actual progress is happening.

I would assume that the best method for Atmos with Sonos would be adding HDMI to a new version of Connnect. Then you can choose any 7 speakers as seperates fed by a connect.

Soundbars - don't really lend themselves to Atmos. Soundbars are more for convienience not high end separation codecs.

Since Beam is not some full fledged 7.1 system. Using Dolby Atmos output from source to TV - the TV should output via ARC downconverted Dolby Digital 5.1 to the Beam. So you can use Dolby Atmos sountrack - it will just be dumbed down to the 5.1 that Sonos can handle.

"Soundbars - don't really lend themselves to Atmos"
Except when they do, like with LG's offering ?

Rather than fork out another £400 for a bar that will *maybe* be able to output 5.1 from other codecs, I'll just put that £400 toward something that can actually do better, guaranteed.

And that's my point. Sonos could have kept up. They didn't.