Feature Request: Enable Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3 or DD+) for Better Audio Quality

+1 on this. Huge disappointment that you cant get 5.1 sound out of devices like chromecast, fire stick, roku, etc as all are now play movies exclusively on dolby digital plus. sonos becoming worthless in home theater department without this feature

+1 this is absurd that you can’t use a Sonos beam to listen to Netflix, Hulu or Prime Video in 5.1 ; assume Sonos isn’t worried about this bc your average consumer doesn’t even realize they are getting sub par sound compared to what they could be getting. Shame on Sonos for not tackling this super obvious request that has been open for well over a year and supporting the format the worlds most common streaming platforms have been using for years!

Just stumbled upon this thread while considering Sonos as a 5.1 solution rather than installing dedicated speaker cabling in a room.

ARC has two operating modes. Single Mode and Common. There are suggestions single mode supports up to 3Mbps, but I believe the bandwidth is very dependent on cable length so likely the 1Mbps measure mentioned is a safe compromise that allows it to work consistently. Common mode can support up to 12Mbps and would therefore be ample to support Dolby Digital+. The problem is that both the sender and receiver have to support Common mode and with most manufacturers not even stating whether they support Common mode - it seems unlikely to gain significant traction. LG do support it, and apparently even support a compromised Dolby Atmos over it.

For me the Sonos brand wants to be like Apple where 'stuff just works' (even if that is more marketing than reality!). Adding DD+ using Common mode would likely result in a hit and miss experience for customers, damaging the perception of 'stuff just works'.

I can't believe Sonos want to get into the space of some of the other soundbar manufacturers where they are taking full HDMI video feeds, stripping the audio and then passing the video on to the TV and even if they did, they'd need new hardware to do that.

Much more likely is a replacement Playbar with eARC sometime in the future.

This article gives a pretty good understanding of the challenge here if you want to draw your own conclusions:
http://community.cedia.net/blogs/david-meyer/2018/06/25/dolby-atmos-over-hdmi-arc

HDMI ARC can and in many implementations DOES DD+.

Atmos was originally encoded in TrueHD (lossless) codec, but there are implementations (like Netflix) that use DD+ to carry Atmos soundtracks in a lossy codec.

A good thread to read:
https://www.avsforum.com/forum/39-networking-media-servers-content-streaming/2378442-dolby-digital-plus-dd-atmos-over-hdmi-arc.html

However, we're not talking Atmos, but DD+ in "regular 5.1". Yes, ARC supports DD+.

Would I love it if Sonos implemented it on the Beam? Damn right I would!

Do I know if the hardware is the limitation? No. I have no idea what HW is under the hood, and if it can be upgrade to support DD+. If you know what HW is there, please do share, along with proper specifications.

My "old" Playbar can do DD 5.1 from Netflix, call me skeptical that a Beam cannot do the same. Sounds like some kind of config issue to me.

DD+ is backwards compatible with HDMI v1.3. Not sure whether the Beam has a v1.4 or 2.0x HDMI port but it must be at least v1.4 to support ARC. HDMI version has zero to do with bitstream decoding capabilities of the DSP in the speaker.

The original question and my response concerned requisite bandwidth, not where audio was decoded. My point was that even HDMI v1.3 enabled sufficient bandwidth to support DD+.

DSPs can be upgraded, particularly if they are media decoders within a SoC. Sonos' job board even has listings for audio DSP engineers.

The truth is..and Sonos knows this...There's not a human alive that would hear or could identify, in a blind audio test or otherwise, the difference between Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Digital through the Beam's small drivers.

I can easily hear the difference between lossy (e.g. 256kbps AAC) and lossless (e.g. ALAC) audio on my Sonos systems. Legacy Dolby Digital is even lower quality than AAC on a bit-for-bit basis. Moreover, legacy DD is lower bitrate per channel because 5.1-ch Dolby Digital audio is typically encoded at bitrates between 384-640 kbps.

Which brings me back to my original point: until eARC arrives--and is implemented in every device within a consumers' home theater system--most consumers are stuck with ARC for the foreseeable future. But, even with ARC, it is technically possible to support higher fidelity audio than legacy DD. Sonos need not support TrueHD or DTS:X or 5.1 PCM to render DD+ audio that is perceptually transparent to these lossless codecs. And, DD+ will better showcase the existing audio quality of Sonos' speakers similar to how Sonos speakers sound better playing stereo PCM or ALAC than AAC or legacy DD.

Let's keep it simple:

[b]Your post is focused on the beam. So your argument makes no sense at all. Yes, HDMI 1.3 can support Dolby Digital Plus but it doesn't support ARC and is completely irrelevant topically. There isnt enough bandwidth available via SPDIF or ARC (which is the exact same audio stream).

Incorrect.

See https://www.avsforum.com/forum/39-networking-media-servers-content-streaming/2378442-dolby-digital-plus-dd-atmos-over-hdmi-arc.html

[b]and with ARC there's only 3 flavors of it, Dolby Digital, DTS 5.1 (in most tv's in the last few years), and PCM stereo.

Incorrect.

[b]Secondarily, in order to support eARC, you need a hardware based solution. It's not physically possible to do it any other way.

Off topic. My focus is ARC, not eARC.

It is physically impossible for the current beam to support Dolby Digital Plus, much less any other Sonos product, period. It cannot physically happen without the release of a "Beam 2" or new hardware entirely.

Incorrect.

No, you cannot hear the difference on a 3" sonos beam driver or playbar, play one driver etc between the two, especially streamed via Netflix etc. Sorry. You might think you can, but you're arguing against much more than you realize is going on with how they do their signal processing and the DD+ stream you are getting.]

Incorrect.

Whatever you say there champ, not going to enterain silliness. Bottom line. You arent getting DD+ in a Sonos product without new hardware. It's a fact, it's provable, and already been proven. Go spend the money, crack one open and take a look inside, it's staring you in the face. You just aren't aware. And unless you build this type of product for a living (which it's clear you don't), it's not expected that you would know this.

Just a hot tip for you:

In re: ARC/DD+, good luck. I'd love to see what an HDMI analyzer tells you that you are actually getting in that DD+ stream. You might be a bit surprised. I'll tell you this juicy lil tidbit, it's obvious you didn't know that the ARC bitrate is capped at 1Mbps, which is a VERY low bitrate DD+ stream. DD+ reaches 6Mbps, and as such ARC DOES NOT SUPPORT IT...you're getting a marginally better stream than legacy DD encoded a bit more efficiently to the extent it can with any additional allocated bits (which isnt a whole lot down that low). So if you want to claim it's supported because it will give you a stream with a DD+ EDID report that is literally encoded slightly more efficiently with an additional 360Kbps across 6 channels of audio vs. legacy DD, feel free to kid yourself (which isn't even what occurs with the additional bitrate anyways in a literal sense). But hey, if you can hear the sub 1Mbps efficiency improvement to the compression schema via an ARC connection on a 3" driver ...I'd love to hire you to come in and work on my staff as none of my 30 year acoustical engineers can do it, nor can an analyzer. When you learn how those extra bits are allocated, you'll probably feel sillier, but I'll just stop there.

So, you can convince yourself that you can hear 360Kbps of glorious audio bliss and massive improvement between DD and DD+ all you want, but the way the compression scheme works and bitstream is handled, it's pretty funny to see you try. But you do you boo. WIth 93% of the panels in the market not supporting DD+ via ARC and a fraction of AVR's out there doing it, you get 3 flavors chief...DD, DTS 5.1 and Stereo PCM ..and if you're foolish enough to think that DD+ is going to matter...well, can't help you chief. 😃

Yuk yuk wasnt trying to gain knowledge, he was trying to be right.
Your need to belittle people is astounding.

He was citing things as fact that werent as if he was qualified to make the statements, from the hardware capabilities in the processors down to the functions of ARC. He wanted everyone to believe he could hear significant difference with a 3" driver smothered in processing sauce using a codec with marginal improvements at low bitrates. It's laughable and any EE or acoustical engineer will tell you the same thing.
I think people just want to know why Sonos would develop a new product that is marketed as being expandable to fill your room with sound and where the onus really is on the source device or even the television to properly extract the 5.1 substream out of DD+ to get the Beam what it wants. Unfortunately, cost saving measures by the developers of these systems don't always make that a reality, and backward support is often a thing of the past as making something future-proof doesn't bring in new revenue.

Now to you...

You decided to step on the dance floor like a scorned housewife asking me if I "cared to" back up my words and you challenged the fact that ARC is limited to 1Mbps in doing so. Now you want to cry about tone of verbage? Don't be so sensitive sweetheart.
There's that belittling behavior again, and trying to emasculate by using demeaning feminine phrases rather than just having a civil discussion. I think there are more productive ways of getting a point across, but to each their own.

Then you want to talk about the spec, and infer you have an understanding of it because you cant "find" where it says to you in plain English the limitation of ARC. There are many more layers involved beyond the 1.4 spec in this equation.
Of course there are, like IEC 60958-3 and IEC 61937, as well as the signaling technology being used to put that data on the line. Given I'm not an adopter of HDMI technologies, I haven't personally had a chance to see a full specification document for HDMI 2.1. I'd be very interested to see how they are handling the higher bandwidth of these advanced audio formats via eARC as it relates to the older 1.4 ARC specification. I'm guessing it has more to do with the Audio Return Channel receiver and transmitter functions in hardware and the signaling technology and little to do with the cable itself, as currently existing Standard HDMI with Ethernet and High Speed HDMI with Ethernet cables can and will support eARC, even if they don't support some of the other features coming with HDMI 2.1. Same cables that are used today that are limited by the 1.4 spec bandwidth will be able to handle higher bandwidth audio for eARC in 2.1.


I'm not here to educate you.Clearly.


I'll say it again. If you are going to try and throw the spec out and sound smart about it, know the spec and everything in it, both literally and relative to it before trying to use it in your arguments. Learn how to read it. Understand it. It's obvious you don't. I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.You can refrain from trying to explain. I prefer to learn from people that have a passion for passing on knowledge rather than those who lord their knowledge or expertise in their chosen field over others, and basically see other people as less than them.I'm responding to fairy tales and pixie dust sprinkled around as if they are fact from people who suffer from the Dunning Kruger effect.I know my limitations with respect to this topic. I'm not an expert in it, but I can recognize that and still partake in discussions to learn more. That doesn't really fit your cognitive bias labeling, but I'm sure you meant it again as a way to belittle us. Who uses that specific terminology unless they've used it once or twice or likely several times before?!

All I have to say is I can't wait to get a new television that does a better job of handling DD+ and can push a DD stream to my Beam. I hate spending money on technology that obsoletes itself from year to year. I also don't want to keep trashing/selling/storing TVs to keep up with the latest greatest.

Oh and for those who care, I found this an interesting article that would in fact show that manufactures have in fact the capabilities through hardware to send higher bitrate material over ARC (specifically LG and Samsung from this article), and that many manufactures had looked to the future and will be able to provide some potential firmware updates to some of their hardware to support eARC when it becomes official, meaning that ARC port will become so much more.
http://www.bluedotmagazine.com/2018/10/31/more-and-more-manufacturers-unlock-hdmi-audio-return-channel/[/quote]

Not sure how "a simple software upgrade" is going to make the audio hardware go from 640kbps to 6Mbps, which is an order of magnitude. If the hardware is grossly over-specced then this might be possible, but if it was designed for DD I don't see how a software upgrade is feasible.

My "old" Playbar can do DD 5.1 from Netflix, call me skeptical that a Beam cannot do the same. Sounds like some kind of config issue to me.

My setup with Playbar + 2x One + Sub get perfect DD 5.1 from Netflix, iTunes, Viaplay with no issues at all. ATV 4K connected to Samsung 7 series TV with HDMI 1.3 cable and optical from TV to Playbar. No issues.

From the documents linked in my first post:

"The 3 main clock rates that are important for Dolby codecs are 48 kHz, 192 kHz and 768 kHz. The data pipe is 2 channels with 16 bits per channel, so when you multiply the pipe size and the clock rate, you correspondingly get 1.5 Mbps, 6 Mbps, and 24.5 Mbps."

“The key difference between HDMI ARC and the HDMI forward channel is how much data can be transmitted - ARC only supports the 48 kHz and 192 kHz clock rates which means that Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus are supported but Dolby TrueHD is not supported as there isn't enough bandwidth.”

"Before 2016, televisions only supported Dolby Digital over HDMI ARC and haven’t been upgraded to support Dolby Digital Plus passthrough. However, most recent televisions now support Dolby Digital Plus over HDMI ARC." My earlier post linked to a list of 2016-17 TVs known to either passthrough or transcode audio to DD+. It also included a number of competitors' soundbars known to support DD+ via ARC. Generally speaking, it can be assumed that Atmos soundbars and AVRs support DD+ over ARC.

Regarding sound quality:

“5.1-ch Dolby Digital audio is typically encoded at bitrates between 384-640 kbps”. Prior to proposing this feature in my first post, I ran a number of tests, using FFMPEG to convert Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, and PCM sources to E-AC3 at a variety of bitrates to determine what was perceptually transparent to my ears. Clearly, E-AC3 is not only more efficient than AC3 but has better resultant audio quality. Moreover, the Dolby E-AC3 encoder reportedly is better than FFMPEG's E-AC3 encoder.

All five of my Sonos Beams are deployed either as 5.0 or 5.1 systems (paired with Sonos Ones and SUBs).

Finally, to correct another error: the lower the bitrate, the greater the audio compression, the greater the potential audio artifacts. Thus, even marginal improvements of available bandwidth in bandwidth constrained scenarios can result in a significant improvement in perceptual audio quality and reduction of audio artifacts.

Jesus. I build this for 25 years and here you come now.

. Learn how to read the spec properly. Its there. Heres a neat picture for you.


Moderator note: Edited for profanity.

Jesus. I build this for 25 years and here you come now. Learn how to read the spec properly. Its there. Heres a neat picture for you.First of all that isn't from the official HDMI 1.4 specification document. I've seen that pretty picture you've posted but it doesn't explain how manufacturers of televisions do have some models that are known to pass DD+ signals through ARC. I understand the physical limitations and hardware designed limitations imposed on the digital audio out connectors. As HDMI cables are not the same medium nor does the ARC have to receive the same output signal as traditional SPDIF outputs, I'm trying to understand how manufacturers are allowing some DD+ over ARC. I struggle with how Common mode on ARC can eek out a bit more bandwidth, if that is how manufacturers are doing it. I don't deny there is some limitation which necessitates the creation of eARC but DD+ is rather broad in it's capabilities. I honestly don't expect an answer and I'm okay with that.
The way you respond to people trying to gather additional knowledge over how some things work is keeping me from thinking you are a helpful source, "sparky". You might consider toning down your responses if you want to be taken seriously as opposed to your my way or the highway approach. Sorry to have bothered you.

First off. This thread was about enabling Dolby Digital Plus on Sonos products. I said you cant on any current hardware they make. I was challenged and told that wasnt true by someone who literally has zero clue and demonstrated so by stating factually incorrect statements about the technology as a whole, much less these products. All by someone who thinks they are smart about it. I elaborated. The more he replied the more nonsensical and laughable it became.

Yuk yuk wasnt trying to gain knowledge, he was trying to be right. He was citing things as fact that werent as if he was qualified to make the statements, from the hardware capabilities in the processors down to the functions of ARC. He wanted everyone to believe he could hear significant difference with a 3" driver smothered in processing sauce using a codec with marginal improvements at low bitrates. It's laughable and any EE or acoustical engineer will tell you the same thing.

You challenged the fact that ARC is limited to 1Mbps in doing so. That's the max for an audio payload. Period. Then you want to talk about the spec, and infer you have an understanding of it because you cant "find" where it says to you in plain English the limitation of ARC. There are many more layers involved beyond the 1.4 spec in this equation.

So, for the layman, I posted a neat little picture that shows you the bitrate capabilities across the signals. And now you complain about it. I'm not here to educate you. You jumped in and challenged what I said. I responded as it's another case of someone throwing data around they dont have any experience nor qualification to be positioning themselves behind, and doing so erroneously.

I'll say it again. If you are going to try and throw the spec out and sound smart about it, know the spec and everything in it, both literally and relative to it before trying to use it in your arguments. Learn how to read it. Understand it. It's obvious you don't. I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.

DD+ has been around now over 10 years. ARC has been around 10 years. Isn't a bit obvious as to why you dont find widespread support of it 10 years down the road? I dont expect an answer, but you should really think about that one for a minute. Might it be because there's marginal value vs cost and the fact that DD+ with it's legs cut off is not how Dolby wants the ecosystem? Hmmmm.....The way you answer is keeping me from thinking you're helping yourself. Im not trying to help you, I'm responding to fairy tales and pixie dust sprinkled around as if they are fact from people who suffer from the Dunning Kruger effect.