DTS on Sonos Arc is a reality as of 11/16/21

Ideally you want your Blu-ray player to play DTS-HD Master Audio discs as lossless multichannel PCM not Dolby Atmos. If you have an Arcana, set the “Add PCM 8ch” setting to ON under the Audio menu.

Well, Sonos delivered on their promise to bring DTS Surround 5.1 support to the Arc. Below is what I got with the following source and equipment. Maybe DTS:HD will come later. DTS:X is a long shot IMO.

Disc: Alien 40 Anniversary / 4K Ultra HD Video / DTS:HD Audio

Sonos Equipment: Arc with Sub x 2 and Sonos One x 2 /  Sonos S2 app v13.4.

Transport: Panasonic DP-UB9000 Ultra 4K Blu-Ray Player > Audio Settings: DTS HD to DTS

Monitor: LG OLED 65 inch C9PUA > Audio settings: HDMI eArc / Pass-Through

 

Thanks for sharing. I tried Unforgiven 4K with a DTS 5.1 track, and I can see DTS 5.1 in the Sonos App.

Unfortunately, due to how the Secondary Audio selection works (the setting you note as “DTS HD→ DTS”) on the Panasonic unit, these settings will prevent the playback of Dolby Atmos and Dolby True HD tracks. That’s because secondary audio cannot be mixed in with the uncompressed Dolby or DTS tracks. So, if someone has discs in their collections with one or the other, they would need to toggle the menu to get the better sound. Otherwise, only the compressed Dolby Digital 5.1 is played back that is embedded in the higher quality track. This can be observed in the Sonos App. With Secondary Audio on, the track playback is Dolby Digital 5.1. With that off, the Dolby Atmos logo is shown. I confirmed this with Star Wars Rise of Skywalker 4K which has a 7.1 Dolby Atmos mix.

Since the Arc fully supports Atmos and Dolby True HD, I think this is a big compromise. (It’s also a compromise to playback the compressed DTS vs the DTS HD but probably not audible for most movies in most home set ups.)

Can this be fixed?

Panasonic is unlikely to do this, but if they added a Secondary Audio choice specific to each type of encoding (Dolby and DTS), then the player could be set up for the best of both worlds. Panasonic is aware of various issues with DTS decoding and the Arc and have yet to make any changes in their firmware updates.

Or of course Sonos could add in DTS-MA playback, but as noted, I agree this is unlikely or we would have it already in this release.

(Not sure if this is true for the Xbox folks on this thread, but it is for the Panasonic people.)

If my reading of this situation is incorrect, please let me know!

Laird

 hdfury arcana version 85

1. Added DTS 5.1 as default for the new SONOS update, now it will be automixed always on. The separate setting for DTS option under the audio menu will add full DTS7.1 as well as DTS-HD descriptors (DTS-MA and DTSX and DTSX IMAX)

2. Renamed BEAM mode as Beam 1/ARC to avoid confusion with Beam 2 which should use default settings.

I guess I had to previously go and turn on the dts on my menu, to get dts support, but with this firmware update defaulted to always on.