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rich2408
Contributor I
Aug 8, 2018 1:36 PM UTC

How to get 5.1 from other sources?

Hi all,

I’ve had to recently get a new Blu Ray player recently and I’m now thoroughly confused and I need some help and advice.

What I have, equipment wise, is the playbar, bass, 2 play1s and bridge. My TV is a Samsung UE65JS9500, Blu Ray is a Panasonic UB900 and throw in games consoles and a PC on top. The way it’s set up currently is everything through the TV and an optical to the playbar.

With me so far? Good :D

Now, currently, I can get 5.1 sound from the consoles, PC and standard TV when available. However, no settings on either the Blu Ray or TV will show anything other than ‘stereo’ when I’m watching a DVD or Blu Ray when I check the input on the Sonos app settings. To make it more confusing, I seem to have an enhanced stereo, where sound is coming through the Play1s, it’s just not true 5.1.

So, how do I get 5.1 from the Blu Ray as well? A second optical cable and swapping them isn’t an option (not easy to get to the sockets due to disability). An Optical Switch may be an answer, but there’s that many choices and I could do without another remote control to lose around the place. An auto switch would be ideal, but as the TV and Blu Ray would both be sending signals would it get confused? A two into one merger of signals is possible, but do they lose quality?

As you can tell, I’m not technically minded, I only half understand the technical stuff. On top of that, there are so many options available at so many prices I’m just totally befuddled by it all! :?

Can anyone recommend something that will definitely work within a reasonable price range (I can’t afford hundred of pounds). I’ve tried searching previous threads and just get more confused :(

Many thanks
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15 replies

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Silverthorn
Prodigy II
Aug 10, 2018 8:01 AM UTC
Here you go. Have you set this? It's the first one that will work for you if you have an appropriate sound track. I checked Predator and it didn't have support but the Matrix did. Go figure. Think I will create a twitting account to twitter at Panasonic about it.

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"I saw the Stooges and the MC5"
rich2408Author
Contributor I
Aug 10, 2018 3:02 PM UTC
Are you certain the Blu Ray is sending DD or is it sending DTS? You can verify by going into the Audio settings on the Blu Ray main menu. As explained above, Sonos doesn’t support DTS. If you want DTS to play you would need a player that can transcode DTS to DD. The market has headed towards streaming, which supports DD, so Sonos has decided to stick with their current codec support.

I’m certain that where applicable the output is DD, it depends what the original format as as to what it changes to (my understanding anyway). There’s a lack of players that output DD as a direct choice when changing format, the retailer could only find one I think, it was very expensive at some £600.
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rich2408Author
Contributor I
Aug 10, 2018 3:11 PM UTC
Here you go. Have you set this? It's the first one that will work for you if you have an appropriate sound track. I checked Predator and it didn't have support but the Matrix did. Go figure. Think I will create a twitting account to twitter at Panasonic about it.



Tried that, nope. Which may be down to the TV.
Stupid question, but is DD automatically 5.1 or is that an optional thing?

According to the retailer the only way to get anything from the rear speakers is using pcm output. I did try the bitstream though. I know one of them wouldn’t accept a tv output of DD, I forget which. But the Sonos app is convinced I’m only getting stereo no matter what encoding or settings I use.

From the look of things I have to bypass the TV when using the player or I physically cannot get 5.1. I don’t know if direct will work (waiting for help swapping cables, bit awkward for me to do).
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Silverthorn
Prodigy II
Aug 10, 2018 3:44 PM UTC
Some TV shows me Dolby 2.0 in the app I think - but just to be clear - you get DD 5.1 through the TV from a console and a computer and not the bluray player? That doesn't make sense to me.

As suggested above i would try connecting the Bluray player to the Playbar directly to test what you get then. If the Bluray player is set correctly and you have a good disk with the right support you should get DD 5.1.
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"I saw the Stooges and the MC5"
vazandrew
Enthusiast I
Aug 10, 2018 4:16 PM UTC
I’m not talking about the output settings of the player but rather the movie itself, if a Blu-Ray only has a DTS audio track then it’s not supported. If it’s Atmos or TrueHD then it’s backwards compatible.
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