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Hi all

I’ve recently purchased a Sonos Arc + Sub (Gen 3) and am new to the community here.

The Arc is connected via eARC my Sony Bravia A80j and my Apple TV is connected to the Enhanced HDMI port.

My TV is set with Audio Passthrough to Auto

When I play content on my Apple TV that is labelled Atmos my Sonos app shows Dolby Atmos is being played on the bar - Perfect. This is the same for the Native Android TV apps.

My confusion comes when I play non Atmos content like 5.1

Using the native Android TV apps (Netflix & Disney+) the Sonos app indicates the Arc is playing Dolby Digital Plus 5.1

Using the Apple TV apps the Sonos app shows the Arc is playing Multichannel PCM 5.1

Can anyone out there please advise the difference and which is the best format.

 

Thanks so much in advance for your responses.

There is a setting in Apple TV - Video and Audio - Audio Format. If that is on auto, Dolby Atmos will be the format if available. If it’s not available, then audio is sent as multichannel LPCM, apparently superior to Dolby Digital 5.1. You can force audio to be in Dolby 5.1 by clicking Change Format and selecting Dolby Digital 5.1

@Monkey King Netflix and Disney+ stream most of its content using Dolby Digital Plus. So you are getting the correct and best audio from the native TV apps.

The reason why you see multichannel PCM from the Apple TV 4K is because it uses a Dolby MAT encoder which converts the original Dolby Digital Plus audio to multichannel PCM.

FYI… Dolby Atmos can be delivered through three audio codecs: Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby MAT, and Dolby TrueHD.

Thanks @GuitarSuperstar 

Having bought a new TV and Sonos it appears the Apple is the weakest link here. I’ve read that the best streaming device overall is the NVIDIA Shield TV Pro. This uses most / if not all the ‘standard’ codecs.

It also sounds like the Shield is the best option for my BR remux movies with TrueHD 7.1 Atmos - which the Apple TV (Plex app) fails to send in Atmos.

You aren’t losing any audio quality with multichannel PCM, and it sounds just as good as Dolby Digital Plus. And the Apple TV 4K is one of the best media streamers available. But if you want to play movies in Dolby TrueHD, you should definitely consider the Nvidia Shield.

Hi there. 

A quick update on this thread.

 

I purchased an Nvidia Shield TV Pro and this resolved all my ‘problems’.

 

Dolby Atmos / Vision from my Plex Media Server BR Remux content, and no more Apple ‘packaged’ sound Codecs from my Apple TV. 
 

System details:

Shield > Enhanced / Dolby Vision HDMI 4 on Sony XR65A80J - Passthrough on TV set to Auto & Shield passthrough enabled

Sonos Arc > eArc / HDMI 3 on A80J (Arc & Sub on Ethernet)

Apple TV > Enhanced HDMI 2 for High Res Lossless / Spatial audio from Apple Music

 

Thanks to all those who responded. 

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