Multichannel PCM on Arc

Oh I agree. I can think of no technical or legal reason that the Arc cannot support multi-channel LPCM, so maybe it will, given more engineering time. At least it is possible with eARC now.

I just hope that people (including myself) don’t buy another (probably inferior) product waiting for this to get sorted. 

Getting very close to pulling my preorder now. Just seems crazy that it’s not included. 

I’m starting to regret preordering the Arc with basic functionality like this not being included. 

I just discovered my TV doesn’t have eARC anyway, so that is a bummer. I’ll have to wait until someone figures out if AppleTV + Atmos + HDMI-ARC + Sonos-Arc = Atmos or not.

Same boat here. I’ve seen reports that some TVs may work, while others might not. I look forward to testing on my own Vizios, but even the wider soundstage of the Arc appeals to me. 

Multichannel PCM support would have been the final push I needed to upgrade from my Beam. All video games consoles and devices benefit from multichannel PCM (even for those with live Dolby output options - the lag/delay is unbearable). 
 

No doubt the Arc sounds better. But I can’t justify the extra cost only to continue to play my games in stereo.

Thanks for sharing all of your feedback everyone. We will be adding Multi-Channel LPCM support to Arc as part of a future software update. We don’t have exact timing to share at this point and will update this thread when we do.

Legend! Look forward to when the update arrives

Amazing! Thanks for the update!

You’re welcome. I’m also renaming the thread slightly.

Hooray! Let's hope its sooner than later! Thanks for the update, might just buy an arc after all....

I love all of my Sonos products. However, I implore everyone to NOT buy an Arc if you need LPCM to optimize the sound of your setup. Buy it AFTER they make the software update. Vote with your wallets to get the team to prioritize this capability. 

Is it feasible that the beam might be able to support Multi-Channel LPCM even though it doesn’t have eARC? If so, does Sonos have plans to add support for this? 

Standard HDMI-ARC doesn't have the bandwidth to transport multichannel PCM, so the Beam is limited by its hardware.

Does this mean the Arc will support surround sound for PC gaming too? 

This is excellent news. Which, using an HDMI splitter, would allow me to get DTS sound from my UB820 UHD Blu-ray player while watching on my LG E6 OLED, while also getting Atmos sound from the player and other set top boxes like my Apple TV. So long as I keep my TV, which doesn’t support Atmos passthrough or eARC it won’t be a perfect setup, but it would make me seriously consider selling my Playbar and making the upgrade to the Arc.

I do still wish Sonos would simply make the deal to get DTS going so I don’t have to consider the upgrade until I also upgrade my TV, but at this point I’ll take what I can get.

DTS limitations you can overcome with the unpack to lpcm feature every player (that I am aware of) has. The lack of DTS is a cosmetic issue, that lack of lpcm would have been a critical functional limitation.

This is some bloody excellent news! That was a concern for at least a decent chunk of my non-streamed content.

Thanks, Ryan. Although you’ve said you don’t have exact timing - what we talking speculation-wise… weeks, months, years?

Soon I hope! Beam owner here with a new LG C9 and keen to upgrade to the Arc but not without LPCM. I play a lot of movies through my pc which will send regular Dolby and downmix DTS to PCM which sounds OK on the Beam (and 2 Sonos One's) but now the Arc and eARC mean high quality, uncompressed sound, that's what I want, not just Atmos support. 

The team has a lot of work to do, and this isn’t the only thing on their list. After coding, it has to go through testing and all of the other release steps, so it’ll take some time. But we’ll let you know if we have a timeline that we can share. 

“The issue with Apple TV content outputting as Stereo appears to be due to the newest LG C9 firmware for LPCM. I’d advise not upgrading to 04.80.03 if your main media device is the Apple TV until Sonos patch in LPCM for the Arc.” :(

https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/h08f9o/testing_arc_with_lg_c9/

I thought that was normal at the moment as the Arc doesn't currently support multichannel pcm? 

The LG C9 update is to address an AirPlay issue .. the default HDMI input format on that model of TV is ‘bitstream’. The firmware update is not going to change what is available with the firmware version v4.71.25 as far as I can ascertain?

- 04.80.03 :

“The device codec capability configuration (EDID) for the LPCM codec changed from 2 channels to 8 channels, so the 2019 models can Pass-Trough multi-channel PCM audio via eARC”

• OFFICIAL CHANGE LOG: Apple AirPlay function improvement - (the rest of changes mentioned below are UNOFFICIAL, extracted from the firmware itself)

• WebOS version updated to v4.8.0-52203

• The device codec capability configuration for the EAC3 codec changed from 6 channels to 8 channels.

• The list of CA certificates was updated.

• Media server 8K video playback support added.

• The max size of the saved EPG data was increased (size of the volume increased by 10MB).

• Airplay application was added to the list of apps that are kept alive.

• Built-In App-Updates:

WebOS Browser App (Chromium) updated (internal version didn't change).

LG Advertisement App updated.

• Firmware updates of the following modules:

WIFI

Audio DSP

HDMI 2.1