Multichannel PCM on Arc

I was pretty shocked to find out that I can’t get surround sound for Switch out of my new Sonos Arc. I appreciate that Nintendo is too cheap to ever license DD5.1 so I really hope Sonos will do a fw update asap with support for multichannel PCM.

On my C9 (stupid firmware update got me) on my Apple TV, i went to to settings > audio (I think it’s audio) and flip the audio from Auto to 5.1 it’s a temp work around to get audio out of the ARC. Otherwise, it comes through all kinds of messed up and you can’t hear anything.

With that said, i’m just as mad as everyone else and hope they get this LCPM update out ASAP.  Kinda disheartening to buy into a product thinking you’ll get Atmos sound only to have to revert back to 5.1.. Especially after spending over 1k on getting the whole setup.

I know they’re trying to fix the issue with an update but I would of rather them push the release back a bit and shipped with the firmware update… I feel like I’m beta testing a half baked product and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 

lol if anyone over in Sonos land is looking at this I will happily volunteer to use a beta firmware to fix this cause well, what do I have to lose at this point?

I have the same setup and Atmos works fine. The problem occurs when you have the Apple TV set to “Auto, Atmos” and play 5.1 content. The firmware update enabled LPCM for the LG C9. Apple TV set to “Auto, Atmos” will then deliver sound as LPCM as it now recognizes the C9’s support for it and considers it the next best thing to Atmos, i.e. rates it above DD5.1. 

The workaround, like you mention, is to set the Apple TV to “Dolby Digital 5.1” for 5.1 content. You will then need to switch back to “Auto, Atmos” for Atmos content.

For WebOS built-in apps there are no problems. Plays Atmos (when available) and Dolby Digital Plus for 5.1 content.

Thanks for helping me explain it. I had a feeling I didn’t explain that 100% correctly but yeah, we are in the same boat. 

Is there an update on this? It’s a simple update and having to use stereo on stadia/ switch due to the £800 ARC not being able to do LPCM is disappointing and I’m looking to return the bar for another that can do all formats out the box. I appreciate its being looked at and there is no eta, but this should have been a feature out the box 

Thanks to everyone for the feedback so far. Support for multi-channel LPCM is in active development. We'll be testing over the next few months to be part of a future software update. We will update the community once it's available.

Thanks for the update. Sound like it won’t be done in time before return periods end... 

That’s why I initiated my return. It appears Sonos will roll out LPCM support alongside other features in a larger update. Sonos should just release the LPCM update on its own as soon as it’s ready. It shouldn’t take long as it’s a simple code and would keep customers happy. I appreciate it makes more sense to release one larger update from a workload point of view, but a lot of customers are dependent on LPCM support and I currently have to use the ARC as a Glorified stereo speaker and there are better and cheaper options for this

A few months?

I just got an LG BX and have my Arc plugged into the eARC port - yet when I play any Dolby Atmos content via my Apple TV 4K I get no sound (tried heaps of combinations of settings to no avail).

From what I understand this is due to the arcs lack of LPCM support. So my Arc will be a very large brick until this update is released in a few months?

You could perhaps ‘switch’ audio codec in the Apple TV settings to Dolby Digital 5.1. I believe that should keep things going with surround sound until the multichannel LPCM update arrives.