Dolby Atmos

Personally, I'm not sure if I would want Sonos to introduce Atmos hardware. It seems too much of a departure from their core business to me. In my mind, Sonos is a music system. It's nice to have 5.1 HT integration, and it would be great if they were to support codecs like DTS and Atmos, albeit downmixed (preferably downmixed by the Sonos hardware itself), so the integration would be seamless, but I would not care for Sonos investing time and money in creating products for a market segment that is not theirs.

I get what you're saying, but you could make the arguement that if Sonos hadn't branched off from it's core of multiroom music, and included HT integration and voice control, than they would be out of business by now. Companies do need to expand and grow but make sure that they expand in the right directions, both in customer interest and in their ability to still deliever sold products.

I think they have the ability to deliver Atmos hardware, I just don't know if there is enough interest. A personally hope that interest is rising as that means more toys to buy, and hopeful the industry consolidates to a single codec, or family of codecs. A lot of that depends on whether Atmos sounds good in a typical home environment, not just in a dedicated home theatre room. If it's easy to use and sounds better than what they currently have, I think it will sell. That's really the reason soundbars gained popularity in the first place, over traditional systems.

A part of me is also wondering if Sonos needs to move towards Atmos in order to stay ahead of the competition, of competition is Amazon and Google. Right now Sonos has the advantage in speaker quality and HT presenses, but that gape could quickly close.

Then again, maybe Atmos is a move in the wrong direction and they should be moving elsewhere. Making decisions like this is part of the reason CEOs make good money.

I get what you're saying, but you could make the arguement that if Sonos hadn't branched off from it's core of multiroom music, and included HT integration and voice control, than they would be out of business by now. Companies do need to expand and grow but make sure that they expand in the right directions, both in customer interest and in their ability to still deliever sold products.
Fair point. This also made me think about D&M, who've come from the other side, moving into multiroom with Heos, from a background of HiFi and A/V, so maybe it's not such a stretch as my gut initially told me. I do still think that there are various levels of integration, and that Sonos might not need to go all the way. I also think the smart speaker trend seems a more natural evolution for Sonos than high end HT.


Then again, maybe Atmos is a move in the wrong direction and they should be moving elsewhere. Making decisions like this is part of the reason CEOs make good money.
They undoubtedly have bigger concerns than people shouting on community boards.

Dolby formats are backward compatible though, the TV set should pass Atmos downsized to Dolby Digital to the Playbar.

This. There's no point in adding Atmos support unless Sonos releases some form of upfiring or ceiling mounted speakers. Current Playbase and Playbar users will never be able to use the codec anyway due to their optical only input.

In the meantime, an Atmos track should be automatically converted to Dolby 5.1 by your TV.

Assuming your TV is new enough to have that capability.

Assuming your TV is new enough to have that capability.

And there is no lip syncing issues. My Panasonic is only in sync when 5.1 is played from internal apps. Sources from hdmi are unwatchable, so I feed everything into the beam directly. You are still relying on something to convert the Atmos soundtrack into 5.1 DD. In my case the Xbox or my Samsung uhd player. It would be so much better if the beam could just decode the Atmos by itself.

The good thing is most of the current 4k Blu Ray movies have Atmos now which on my set up (Playbar,sub and 2 ones) and a 4k LG blue ray player and LG 65" oled TV puts out an very good 5.1 soundtrack. No Atmos but very good 5.1....i can live with this and it's through the optical out from the TV to the Playbar.