Multichannel PCM on Arc

Hi Rubeo, I can’t speak to specifics on why it wasn’t included, but I’ll make sure the team knows people are asking for it. Thanks for reaching out!

This is the biggest take away I’ve had so far from the announcement.

I do a lot of gaming on my PC and PC games are nearly all using multi channel uncomrpessed audio. So if this new soundbar is unable to take that multi channel audio and then upmix it into atmos output then I can’t buy it. I’d love to upgrade for Atmos, but it sounds like my PC games will still just have 2 channel audio on this new soundbar.

Can you confirm if this is the case, or will the Arc upmix multi channel PC gaming sound into surround sound/atmos?

With the Playbar if I plug my PC in, then the Playbar only outputs 2.1 and the my rear Sonos play 1 surrounds dont output any sound at all. All I want is for the Arc to output Atmos and the rear Play 1s to make some sound instead of sitting dead quiet

I know for a fact that nearly every dolby atmos AVR on the market will upmix multi channel sound from a PC into Atmos or Dolby TrueHD. Surely Arc should be able to do the same

No multi channel PCM means no 5.1 for Nintendo Switch. Arghhh agree always something missing. 

ooh that's a good point I forgot about the switch. Yeah there is no way to get 5.1 sound from the switch on the Playbar, and no 5.1 for the Arc either 

I don't get it, why wouldn't they include this? Ugh disappointing.

Same disappointment here. Google Stadia currently outputs only multichannel PCM as its surround offering so it’s very frustrating to see this unsupported. I don’t see the point in an upgrade here right now.

Another very disappointed potential customer. My equipment can output the dts/dolby formats in bitstream or transcode everything to pcm, but not dolby. This is, I believe, the standard functionality since roughly the ps3 era.

Lack of multichannel pcm means I would unfortunately have to pass on this product and not buy further into the otherwise brilliant sonos ecosystem. I hope this tragic oversight can be fixed quickly with a firmware update, in the same way LG is fixing the more or less identical issue with their 2019 and 2020 earc lg tvs.

… It doesn’t look like this is even a technical issue, as the device supports Dolby MAT, which is multichannel PCM and additional dolby metadata on top. I mean, I’m not sure how it’s even possible to not support multichannel PCM in this case? I’m starting to hope that this is just a press error, considering how fatal an omission the lack of multichannel pcm would be for a device of this type that does not have DTS support.

Originally Dolby MAT was used for transporting TrueHD. When atmos was released, they allowed MAT to unpack both DD+ and TrueHD to multichannel PCM. So its possible sonos are supporting TrueHD MAT but not PCM MAT. God knows why not. 

Understood, thanks. Still is the difference between getting and not getting one when one has an earc equipped system with anything more than Netflix.

ARC use case = plug Arc into TV, turn TV on and open Netflix. That’s it, dont try anything else

This seems a strange omission. The Beam can do multichannel PCM but the Arc cannot?  This might save me some money and prevent me from buying an Arc as I would want surround sound from the Nintendo Switch. 

The Beam can only do stereo PCM (and DD5.1), at least for now.

I’m pretty sure the ARC in Beam cannot support 7.1 multichannel PCM, unlike the eARC in Arc. There can be a functional reason why Beam doesn’t support multichannel PCM, but there should be none for (e)Arc. It’s a short-sighted artificial limitation that significantly limits the useability of the Arc: both a significant amount of consoles, blu-rays and UHD movies on disc are rendered incompatible until it is fixed, hopefully very soon, ie. the second S2 debuts.

(Hey Sonos, how did nobody think of the amount of confusion the limitations of “ARC” in Beam vs. the features of “Arc” are going to create?)

My "at least for now" was more directed at the fact that hardware wise, the Beam does have the capability to potentially support DD+ and Atmos over DD+. Multichannel uncompressed is indeed not possible over ARC.

I'm so annoyed they dont support muti channel PCM...I agree that there is always something missing with sonos. 

One reason I hate my playbar is huge lag while bitstreaming xbox one to Dolby and lack of support for Nintendo switch.

Even if I buy the ARC and a new TV it will still not solve the above problems... complete waste of time!

It's a "complete waste of time" to not buy something which is unfit for your purpose?  

Ok, waste of time probably not the right word to use. What I mean is it is a wasted opportunity in sonos not addressing these shortcomings.

It’s a complete waste of time to release a product that has significant compatibility issues due to dependence on eARC (which few TVs have) and a lack of support for fundamental codecs (that the enthusiasts who have eARC TVs would probablyneed). ;)

That’s not what my comment was about, but thanks for the rant.  

Add another voice to the “please add support for LPCM 5.1” chorus. As a Nintendo Switch owner it’d be really cool to have full surround support.

Blame Nintendo for using a format that cannot be passed over optical, or ARC. They don’t care if you want to take the audio from your TV (that gets it via HDMI) and do something else with it. They don’t want to pay the royalties to Dolby, that’s all.

eARC is the only transport that can handle LPCM 5.1 from a TV to an audio device.

Oh, I definitely blame Nintendo. I just think that given Nintendo’s reputation for listening to customer issues compared to Sonos’, Sonos is way more likely to fix it on their end than Nintendo is. Even if Nintendo’s fix would work for far more people at present than Sonos’ fix would given the eARC requirement for supporting LPCM 5.1.

why pay royalties to anyone. LPCM is superior and free.

The playstation 5 and new Xbox are using new 3d Audio codecs that blow Atmos away - I’ve tried the PS5 version and it makes Atmos look like a toy. Whats the point paying a license for that lol

Yep I’m another voicing my annoyance that LPCM has been left out. It’s free and is used across all gaming consoles as default. There is no logic behind why it’s not supported by the Sonos ARC especially with eARC