LG C9 + Arc + UB820 / Multichannel PCM for DTS Blu-Ray discs

@GuitarSuperstar 

I just played Spectre 4K blu-ray on Sony Blu-ray player through LG CX to Sonos arc / 2x sub / 2 One SLs
The Blu-Ray outputs LPCM 7.1 (PCM conversion of DTS 7.1 audio stream) it is reported as 7.1 by Sonos App correctly.

The dialogue was fine, and there was surround from rears but it seemed to be lacking to my ear but I don’t have definitive evidence of mixing problem. The known Sonos bug is 2 surrounds in 7.1 are output from rears and what should be in rears is missing and not mixed in as I understand it.

@iBoyley If this turns out to be the case then HDFury (for those with Panasonic Blu-ray is only solving half the problem). Sonos have been working on a firmware fix for months now with no release. We should find out from CEO when that is coming. 

@madhav That’s why I am interested to see how test tones from the left and right side surround channels and the left and right rear channels will play out of my two Play:1s. If all four surround channels play the test tones clearly out of my two rear speakers, I would assume that the Arc is downmixing the four surround channels correctly.

I wanted to report my latest findings - alas nothing that creates a fix without the DR HDMI 4K. And based on other recent threads, that may only solving part of the problem (7.1 not rendering correctly on the Sonos Arc + surrounds). However, to the issue of even getting the Panasonic to output multichannel at all, this is what I have to report.

I have filed a ticket with Panasonic on this issue, giving them extensive notes and links to this thread and others which report the issue. I have noted that other players are correctly outputting MC PCM audio with the LG C9/CX and Sonos Arc combo. That was filed today, and I do not expect an answer soon. I specifically asked that the email be passed to their audio engineering team as a customer support rep will not be versed in this area.

My main experiment this weekend has been to use a LG 90 UHD player as source. Directly connected to the LG, and with the LG set to decode the Blu-ray audio tracks, 5.1 audio is received by the Sonos from both DTS and Dolby tracks. Thus, the video and audio portions of our systems works. This has been widely reported as working, but I wanted to confirm with my set up that it was the case.

Further, I was curious to look at the EDID file with this set up - in some way did the LG player + LG TV somehow communicate better since all in the same brand. The answer is no. The EDID file provided by the TV to the LG 90 player is the exact same data as it shows to the Panasonic. This was absolutely my expectation, but I figured better safe than sorry.

I did a few other setting attempts just to see what happened. For example, I disconnected the Sonos and used the TV speakers. In general mode, I enabled Dolby surround for the internal speakers which creates a fake support mode. The Panasonic still refused to give out more than 2.0 PCM. (Note, with my C9, I could actually feed it DTS audio, but that is not the end goal here, so the point is moot. The CX would not support DTS in any regard.)

Basically, as far as I can tell, if you want full functionality from the Panasonic UMB820, you need to use a device that allows modification of the EDID file to correctly advertise Speaker data.

If you want to switch UHD players, alas all of them come with downsides:

LG - Decoded audio is all or nothing - DTS and Dolby cannot be selected individually. No upscaled 4K images from 1080P discs. 

Sony - Dolby Vision support requires toggling a setting

PlayStation or Xbox - I believe this can be set up to work for all discs and decode everything properly (plus you get a video game machine). However, unless you buy a remote, you have to use the game controller for control. The LG remote might work to a limited extent too.

Pioneer - not sure on this. Have not seen many threads.

Oppo - I think this works in all formats, but the unit is only available used and at high prices

Rip all media to video files and playback off USB/HD/Network - this works but of course is very manual to rip your library of discs!

I will report back what I hear from Panasonic. Based on previous threads, I suspect I will not get far. 

I would love to hear that a Sonos rep is aware of this thread and perhaps can look at this too - maybe the Sonos can tell the LG what speakers it has? I am very unclear how EDID data works from soundbars. I tried to see if I could hook up the Sonos to the DR HDMI 4K and capture it’s file, but this did not work at all.

Hey people. In regard to the Panasonic 4K bluray players I’m going to suggest Panasonic have still been trying to improve it.

Yesterday I popped in Divergent to watch which has a DTS-X track. To my surprise I got quite a good surround experience compared to previous viewings. It was noticeable because the sequels have Atmos tracks and gave a much better experience with my Playbase setup. Bit weird because the specs for the 420 at least say no DTS-X decoding, only bitstream.

I always thought changing the Down mix setting to surround encoded didn’t do much of anything. 

I had changed the DTS down mix setting to PCM after reading all these threads but swapping it back still gave me pretty good surround.

Other DTS-HD based tracks don’t seem to give as much obvious improvement but after a quick little try I think Inception might give me decent surround if I bump up the volume on the surrounds. The front action from my Playbase seemed better. Will watch it tonight and see. Will also try to pick up another DTS-X track to see how a different one goes.

Anyway, this just to say hopefully everything will get sorted at some stage. Chin up.

I still expect to get an Arc at some stage though. 

^^^^^ Goodness I am glad I put Divergent with its DTS-X track on again. My quick test of a DTS-HD had me thinking I just needed to bump up the surrounds a bit to get a decent surround mix out of them and that proved to be true.

I was particularly happy to get the music score for 2001 also coming from the surrounds. Stereo from the front always felt a bit lacking after being to the surrounds being used for music playback.

+5 on the surrounds seems about right.

Not much of a pain to do it for the few DTS-HD discs I have. Fortunately I don't have any legacy Blurays. 

You know I just had a thought maybe the change is on Sonos' end. Maybe they weren't looking at what sort of Dolby Pro logic type stuff was added to the stereo downmix by the Panasonic 4k Bluray player until some time more recently?

In more recent times I have been a bit surprised how many free to air movies I watch give me surround now even when the Sonos app says it's Stereo PCM

Update: I received a pleasant reply from the Panasonic support team apologizing for the issues and asking for a bit more information including proof of purchase. We’ll see where this leads next.

I got the Arcana today to try and fix the LPCM issue with the Panasonic 820 which it did, however still have the 7.1 bug that Sonos has yet to fix.  However it then caused my nVidia Shield TV to start outputting everything DTS to stereo 2.0 now.  Removed the Arcana and it fixes the Shield back to doing LPCM multichannel so wtf lol.  Also experienced a lot of random CEC issues, unable to control volume and having to power things off and power on in certain orders multiple times etc.  I’d rather listen to some disks in stereo than to deal with those issues so I’m sending it back or selling it.  I sure wish Panasonic or somebody could just fix this issue, especially with all the work ya’ll are doing to pinpoint it, thanks for being persistent and hopefully it pays off!  I too had opened a case with Panasonic and they had also asked for proof of purchase which I gave but then their reply was to go into the settings and set the audio settings to PCM and try etc, things we obviously already tried before contacting anybody so I gave up.

FYI - I have finally listed my no longer needed Arcana as I switched to the DR HDMI 4K to solve my issue. (Scroll back through this thread to see my saga.) Since I was comfortable editing the EDID files. the DR HDMI 4K is a better solution for me.

If you are interested in acquiring my item, the listing is here:

http://ebay.us/MYOBc5?cmpnId=5338273189

It is certainly not a comprehensive solution, but it is a relatively easy one, particularly if your set up is not very complex. Do read the post above for issues with the nVidia devices.

You are a legend Laird. 

I've got all my fingers crossed that you get something back from Panasonic suggesting they accept the problem is theirs and they intend to fix it.