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

@fabian You could set the DTS setting in your second screenshot back to PCM rather Bitstream but I don’t know that it matters, my TV is also a Panasonic and I think the two play nicer together than another TV might so it might do. The app will just show Stereo PCM but get a disc with a good DTS track and find a good action scene. You should notice a difference. I would try with something a bit newer to test with and bump the volume of your surrounds a bit.

They added this quite some time ago. The first Divergent movie had a DTS based track and when I replayed it at some stage I notice I was getting a decent surround sound experience.

Thank you @Silverthorn for explaining. So basically, there is no indication on the Sonos app as “confirmation” (like it is when you e.g. hear Dolby variants, etc.), you can only confirm by closely listening. That would also mean changing back and forth between “Downmix” → “Surround encoded” and “Downmix” → “Stereo” should make a difference when listening, correct? I will give this a try. Just out of curiosity: did you find this out yourself or was this documented somewhere?

To give you a little broader background on how I initially tried to achieve what I wanted to achieve: next to my Panasonic Blu-ray, I have a Media PC (an Intel NUC) which is running Kodi mediacenter. This streams my digital movies from a NAS drive in my home network. I have a lot of digital movies with DTS sound too and I only recently found out that Kodi is able to transform multichannel audio (like DTS) to AC3 in 5.1 sound - so despite these DTS encoded movies, I can watch them via my LG BX TV (no DTS passthrough) in Dolby Multichannel 5.1 sound, transcoded by Kodi and outputted on my Sonos Beam 2.

The discussion I had on this can be found here: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=367120

Long story short: I was somehow hoping to solve this the same way with “tweaking” my settings on the Panasonic Blu-ray and have my DTS Blu-ray discs played on my Sonos Beam 2 with “Multichannel 5.1” sound. I don’t care if it’s not “native” DTS - anything better than this crap Stereo PCM sound would be considered a success for me.

As a lot of other users, I did not pay enough attention to DTS-passthrough capabilities when I initially bought this LG TV in 2021. I only added the Sonos Beam 2 in 2022 and the Panasonic Blu-ray in 2023.

Anything else with Dolby sounds absolutely great on the Beam 2, regardless if I play the source on Kodi with digital media or via Blu-ray discs on the Panasonic. It’s just that DTS on my discs are giving me a headache that I couldn’t figure out on my setup yet...😩

No as I mentioned I only noticed it when I replayed Divergent and noticed I was getting a decent surround experience. It was a DTS-X track and for some reason they seem to get bit more volume in the surrounds so it was quite noticeable.

I’m not sure but I think they added support for LPCM around that time so they might have added support for this as well. If I remember people were surprised LPCM wasn’t already supported and agitated for it? Someone else might remember more. 

Thank you @Silverthorn for all your feedback! Appreciate your input. Quick update: I decided to buy a HDFury Arcana to split up Audio & Video from my devices (MediaPlayer, Blu-ray, Gaming Console, ...) and have the raw Audio signal sent straight to the Sonos Beam 2 to get “proper” DTS. I got tired with all the tweaks and fiddling in settings which in the end does not achieve the same result as getting 100% clear DTS on my Beam 2 when e.g. watching Blu-rays.

Penny-pinching LG to blame who did not want to pay the license fees to DTS and supporting DTS passthrough in their TVs (at least the models from the past years). I got the Arcana for a very good price and bought it 2nd hand/used on eBay - looking forward to try this out soon.

Anyway, again thanks for all the feedback and help until this point!

Just spent the last 2 hours reading all these posts to understand all the obstacles that we can face while trying to get the best possible audio experience with the Sonos Arc.

My setup provides me with Dolby Digital 5.1 output from the Apple TV (not the 4K model) for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Crave, Apple TV+. My TV provider (Bell Fibe in Canada) also gives me Dolby Digital 5.1 on the Sonos Arc as well as the Nintendo Switch.

The only device that isn't able to give me anything else that Stereo PCM was my BluRay player (Sony BDP-6500) which I just upgraded to the Sony BDP-X700 thinking that it would solve the problem... It didn't!

My TV is the LG65EG9600 which doesn't have eARC, port 2 is ARC only. All my devices are on a HDMI switch and the output goes to HDMI port 1. The Sonos ARC is connected to HDMI port 2 to get the ARC capabilities.

I checked the supported formats for that TV model on the rtings Web site and it seems to be able to support both DTS and Dolby Digital in 5.1 Passthrough. I want to be able to get something better than 2.0 PCM but I'm not sure if my only option is to buy an audio extractor like the HD Fury or an equivalent.

My HDMI switch is from EZCOO but doesn't do the audio extraction. They do have another device that does this which I could put in between the Sonos and the LG TV a bit like the Arcana…

Any suggestions before I go and add another device in the audio chain for the BD player? 

This is the EZCOO switch with eARC Audio Extraction that I'm looking at right now

https://www.easycoolav.com/products/4k-120hz-hdmi-21-switch-switch-4x1-earc-audio-extractor-vrr-allm-switcher

Great thread. I tried to fix that exact problem and spent hours (stretched over a couple of days) trying to fix this issue. ARC & 2022 LG OLED & Panasonic player. As a bonus I have all stuff running through a Marantz Cinema 70S AV receiver - using it as HDMI switch. Makes things even more complicated. After reading all of this I tried using my PS5 as UHD player. Runs through the Marantz to the LG TV and then to my ARC. 

Using the Panasonic player: 2.0 PCM. 

Using the PS5: 7.1 PCM (but no Dolby Vision etc) 

Should have tried this earlier… it’s a decent compromise for now, I guess and hope the next soundbar from Sonos will support DTS:X. 
 

Thanks everyone who contributed. Really helpful. 
As a bonus I have a new problem now: since tonight and since running the new setup my WiFi keeps breaking down. Once I turn off the ARC it comes back. Haha. Welcome to hell. 

You might want to check your telly on rtings dot com. check the audio section. I would have thought it would pass on a DTS signal or a LPCM signal from your panasonic.

My telly won’t pass on a DTS 5.1 signal to my Playbase unfortunately but I hope to replace it later this year most likely with an LG.

Thanks. I tried - it‘s the 8K Z2 (OLED 77Z29LA) but I can‘t seem to find it. As it works with the PS5 (and doesn‘t with my Panasonic UHD player) I assumed it’s not the TV. But yeah, LOTS of settings to cross check. 

Rtings doesn't have that but picking a random 2022 LG which turned out to be an entry level one it looks like it has support for LPCM passthrough but not for DTS.

https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/lg/qned80-2022