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I have a Sonos Arc + Sub connected to my Samsung S95B eArc HDMI port and connected to the same TV, to another HDMI portM, an Apple TV 4K (3rd Gen). The TV is setup for passthrough and when I increase or decrease the volume it shows Sonos Arc (eArc HDMI). Apple TV shows, in the settings, under immersive audio, Dolby Atmos. From my understanding it everything is properly setup.  

When I play content, be it Apple TV+, Netflix, HBO Max, etc..  and press down button on the remote to look at the Info Window it shows it’s playing 4K Dolby Vision but no Dolby Atmos label. As a matter of fact Dolby Atmos label only appears on Apple TV+, very rarely, and then disappears. When browsing for content the apps they do show support for Dolby Atmos. 

What confuses me is that while playing the content (Apple TV+, Netflix, etc..) the Sonos App shows the Dolby Atmos in both “Now Playing” and System Information. 

The question I have is: which one is correct? Is Apple not aware it’s playing Dolby Atmos content or is the Sonos app for some reason incorrectly labelling the content it’s receiving as Dolby Atmos. It’s my first Dolby Atmos setup so I don’t even have a reference to compare with and understand if it’s Dolby Atmos or not. 

Thanks. 

Your TV and Apple TV settings are correct. So if you are playing a Dolby Atmos source and the Sonos app is displaying Dolby Atmos, you are getting Dolby Atmos audio.

I appreciate your feedback - so the recommendation is to ignore Apple TV’s labelling of content and instead trust Sono’s app to confirm wether Dolby Atmos audio is being played or not? 

This next question is probably absurd but it results of the lack of knowledge I have of the Dolby Atmos implementation - is it possible that for some reason Sonos receives a incomplete / corrupt Dolby Atmos signal / data and gets fooled to think it’s playing Dolby Atmos when it is not or at least not to it’s full capacity? 

 

1] They should be the same. All Sonos does is report what is sent to it. It is possible, although unlikely, that Apple (or any other streamer) can mislabel a display of what they claim a show is in, but Sonos reads the signal sent, and not some text description. As an example, sometimes the ‘bumper’ for a movie is in Dolby Digital, and is shown as such in the Sonos software, but then switches to Atmos when you get to the real ‘movie’ part. 

2] No, that’s not possible with a digital signal. 

Thanks Bruce for clarifying that for me. I now feel comfortable that everything is correctly setup and that it’s Apple TV info window that for some reason when playing a movie does not display the Dolby Atmos label. 

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