PS4 Pro outputting PCM via LG CX shows Multichannel PCM 7.1 for Sonos Arc, but rear surrounds have no audio

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S
Userlevel 3
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So yeah for PS5 it’s showing PCM 5.1 ( not Dolby as I said in my previous post) but can also confirm that Apple TV 4K is still showing 7.1.

F

I am having this same issue on the PS5.  I tried selecting the PS5 option of connecting to an AV receiver and using a 5.1 setup but I am still missing audio channels.  Anyone know what the exact issue is?

B
Userlevel 4
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For those having issues with the LG CX outputting MultiChannel 7.1 to the Sonos ARC, have you tried changing the sound output to Auto instead of passthrough? This fixed the issue and changed it to Multichannel 5.1 for me.

Changing it to Auto changes the output to Dolby Multi-channel PCM 5.1, which is not the same as Multichannel PCM (LPCM)  as far as I know.

 

It shows in the Sonos App as Multichannel PCM 5.1 when playing Dolby 5.1 content and shows as Dolby Atmos when playing Atmos content (Not DD+ Atmos). From my understanding this is what you would expect to see, since Sonos doesn’t do 7.1.

1 x Arc, 1 x Beam Gen 2, 1 x Amp, 2 x Sonos In Ceiling Speakers, 2 x Sub, 9 x Sonos Ones, 5 x Symfonisk Lamp
B
Userlevel 4
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For those having issues with the LG CX outputting MultiChannel 7.1 to the Sonos ARC, have you tried changing the sound output to Auto instead of passthrough? This fixed the issue and changed it to Multichannel 5.1 for me.

Changing it to Auto changes the output to Dolby Multi-channel PCM 5.1, which is not the same as Multichannel PCM (LPCM)  as far as I know.

 

It shows in the Sonos App as Multichannel PCM 5.1 when playing Dolby 5.1 content and shows as Dolby Atmos when playing Atmos content (Not DD+ Atmos). From my understanding this is what you would expect to see, since Sonos doesn’t do 7.1.

Ok that is nice, unfortunately not in my case. I’m using an Apple TV 4K and not a PS4 so perhaps there is a difference there. Have to do some more experimenting. 

I’m using an Apple TV 4K as well at the moment on an LG CX and getting these results. I’ve left the Apple TV on Auto, Atmos Available for Audio and I have set HDMI Input Audio on the TV to Bitstream and Audio Output to Auto. It’s really weird how so many of us are getting different results.

1 x Arc, 1 x Beam Gen 2, 1 x Amp, 2 x Sonos In Ceiling Speakers, 2 x Sub, 9 x Sonos Ones, 5 x Symfonisk Lamp
M
Userlevel 2
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So, it looks like this might be the reason: https://en.community.sonos.com/home-theater-228993/lpcm-eta-for-arc-6842558?postid=16488286#post16488286

 

TL:DR, it looks like LPCM 7.1 is downmixed incorrectly with side channels coming out the rear and rear channels not coming out at all. Back to Dolby Bitstream it is. (And back to having to switch modes between Atmos and non-Atmos on Apple TV 4k too.) Sigh.

 

I know Sonos doesn’t do ETAs, but can we at least get an official acknowledgement of this problem?


can you make the PS4 output lpcm 5.? 

 

Unfortunately not. The only options on the PS4 Pro are Linear PCM, Bitstream (Dolby), and Bitstream (DTS). It’s cool you can choose 5.1 or 7.1 on the Switch, and cool that there’s a PS5 option to make it send the right thing too.

For the AppleTV, changing the CX to output Auto instead of Passthrough sends “Dolby Multichannel PCM 5.1”, which is subtly different from “Multichannel PCM 5.1”, in that it’s somewhat compressed. I don’t know that I would personally be able to tell the difference between those, but as others have said, if you want uncompressed best-quality sound from Blurays, you need the CX to use Passthrough.

Regardless, Sonos will tell you if it’s receiving a signal it can’t process, like DTS. Seeing as it’s receiving a Multichannel 7.1 signal, and not telling me it can’t process it, I would consider sending sound out of the wrong speakers a bug 😂

 

 

 

 

S
Userlevel 3
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I’ve tested 5.1 output on PS5 for about 5 mins, no dropouts on Beam 2 / LG CX, latest software. 

N
Userlevel 4
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Is this issue only with the LG CX?

Anything in DD 5.1 on apple4k tv is output as multichannel pcm 7.1

Blurays on my oppo203 in 5.1  output as 7.1

setting series x to uncompressed 5.1 outputs as multichannel pcm 7.1

 

Unsure if this topic relates to the same issue, can someone from Sonos please confirm, I have had this issue since the LPCM update you released, and it would be nice to know if it is indeed an issue with the Sonos?

 

Thank you


It's  not your TV, the Arc needs a software update to handle downmixing properly 

SONOS ARC | SONOS Sub | SONOS Play 1 x 2 | LG C9 OLED | PS5 | RTX3090 Gaming PC | Sennheiser GSP600 Headset | Audio Pro T8L Desktop Monitors
B
Userlevel 4
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Is this issue only with the LG CX?

Anything in DD 5.1 on apple4k tv is output as multichannel pcm 7.1

Blurays on my oppo203 in 5.1  output as 7.1

setting series x to uncompressed 5.1 outputs as multichannel pcm 7.1

 

Unsure if this topic relates to the same issue, can someone from Sonos please confirm, I have had this issue since the LPCM update you released, and it would be nice to know if it is indeed an issue with the Sonos?

 

Thank you

Yes it is only with the LG BX/CX/GX from what I can tell.

My Sony A8H with eARC passes 5.1 PCM without any issues from the Apple TV, Nintendo Switch etc. My LG CX always had the 7.1 PCM issue.

Add it to the list of issues with the LG CX. Thankfully, generally LG end up patching their issues eventually even though they often break other things in the process.

For me, I’d rather not deal with the level of incompetence LG brings to such expensive products. They’ve always had issues with Sonos equipment in terms of dropouts, lip sync etc.

1 x Arc, 1 x Beam Gen 2, 1 x Amp, 2 x Sonos In Ceiling Speakers, 2 x Sub, 9 x Sonos Ones, 5 x Symfonisk Lamp
L
Userlevel 5
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Did the latest system update version 13.0 fix this issue , has anyone tried it yet?

I believe it’s helped with dropouts for some tv owners, I will be pretty disappointed to finally get an update system side and doesn’t fix this as well.

Doesn’t fix this issue

Shame, perhaps now we have version 13, minor fixes will come along soon.

I
Userlevel 2
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I emailed their CEO earlier today and received a response back from one of their senior software engineers 

 

“Patrick forwarded your Email concerning LPCM down-mix issues and I can give you an update on that. The engineering team is currently working on the issue as we speak. There are two steps here, one is to correct the downmixing in the case where there are no discrete surrounds and the other is when there are discrete surrounds. We have completed the first step and we are testing the fix and now working on the second step.

 

At this time I am unable to give you an exact date for availability of the SW fix but know that we are addressing it and when I know more, I will let you know.”

 

 

Hopefully it’s not that far away

UPDATE: (not a good one sadly)

 

My apologies for not replying, things are hectic here and it fell through the cracks.

 

The fix is still undergoing testing. Due to the way we handle SW releases, we are expecting these fixes to turn up in our July SW update.

J

Is this still on track for a fix this summer?  I noticed it today with a 2021 Apple TV 4K and lg CX77 also.  Figured the new model might be better but same issue. Have been getting around Ps5 issue by switching to “Dolby” on that one 

B
Userlevel 4
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I really strongly believe that Sonos is unintentionally misleading us with their supposed fix for this issue.

Sonos will add downconversion for LPCM 7.1 to LPCM 5.1, however I think the issue with LG TV’s incorrectly sending all LPCM audio as LPCM 7.1 won’t be fixed as it’s an LG problem. The LG’s wrongly send all LPCM as LPCM 7.1 even if it’s only LPCM 5.1 audio.

I really hope I’m wrong, but I feel Sonos announcement that the issue was on their own end has made everyone not put pressure on LG to fix their own issue with incorrectly sending the wrong audio. As someone else here said, if you use a HDFury device or a Sony TV the issue goes away.

1 x Arc, 1 x Beam Gen 2, 1 x Amp, 2 x Sonos In Ceiling Speakers, 2 x Sub, 9 x Sonos Ones, 5 x Symfonisk Lamp
J

What does the HD fury do to it?  I’m not really wanting to try and fit this behind my setup too

E

I had the wonderful bug where the audio channels were not sent to the center channel. A simple restart of the stream fixed it but something with the CX, Apple TV and Arc don’t work quite right. I hate when it happens as I don’t have a good fix other then try again  and hope it’s ok this time. 

R

I have a similar issue. I just changed from a beam to a beam gen2. I am using an Apple TV as source with an lg cx tv. When using the earc connection and digital out passthrough on the tv I get multichannel pcm 7.1 whenever I play any dolby 5.1 on the Apple TV. Changing the digital out to auto it changes the signal to Dolby Multichannel PCM 5.1. A similar thing happens on the ps4 using pcm. I feel like the lg cx is telling source devices to send multichannel pcm 7.1 instead of multichannel pcm 5.1.

Passthrough is exactly what it sounds like, the audio is “passed through” the TV exactly as it comes from the source.  So if the source is 7.1, you get 7.1.  

While that may be true LG is doing some processing even when set to passthrough. Both my Apple TV and PS5 send a 7.1 signal instead of 5.1 even when the audio source is 5.1. LG have been absolutely silent on the issue and I don’t see them ever fixing the problem. Once Sonos adds down mixing, in theory everything should be fixed but for now LG owners will have to continue to keep their audio out to ‘auto’ which unfortunately means losing surround sound for the Nintendo Switch and fully lossless audio. 

L
Userlevel 5
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I really strongly believe that Sonos is unintentionally misleading us with their supposed fix for this issue.

Sonos will add downconversion for LPCM 7.1 to LPCM 5.1, however I think the issue with LG TV’s incorrectly sending all LPCM audio as LPCM 7.1 won’t be fixed as it’s an LG problem. The LG’s wrongly send all LPCM as LPCM 7.1 even if it’s only LPCM 5.1 audio.

I really hope I’m wrong, but I feel Sonos announcement that the issue was on their own end has made everyone not put pressure on LG to fix their own issue with incorrectly sending the wrong audio. As someone else here said, if you use a HDFury device or a Sony TV the issue goes away.

 

Well said.

 

I have tried contacting LG about the issue but 1st line support don’t seem to grasp what the issue is I’m trying to explain to them, and reply to my emails with some nonsense unrelated to the issue.

This was why I recently asked Sonos support on here if they could help and contact LG to try and get the issue resolved, at the end of the day it might be an LG issue, but sound still comes out a Sonos speaker. 

I find it sad that Sonos seem to wash their hands of issues if it’s not related to their devices, despite that device being in the chain and playing a big part in the actual issue.

Which is why I believe Sonos could help us solve the issue by contacting LG as well to highlight the issue to them with a bit more weight behind it, (being sonos and all).

Is it really asking much for Sonos to contact LG and make them aware of the issue for all LG owners that own the Sonos Arc?

B
Userlevel 4
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Hi @billiejoe87 

I really strongly believe that Sonos is unintentionally misleading us with their supposed fix for this issue.

Sonos will add downconversion for LPCM 7.1 to LPCM 5.1, however I think the issue with LG TV’s incorrectly sending all LPCM audio as LPCM 7.1 won’t be fixed as it’s an LG problem. The LG’s wrongly send all LPCM as LPCM 7.1 even if it’s only LPCM 5.1 audio.

I really hope I’m wrong, but I feel Sonos announcement that the issue was on their own end has made everyone not put pressure on LG to fix their own issue with incorrectly sending the wrong audio. As someone else here said, if you use a HDFury device or a Sony TV the issue goes away. 

To be clear, I was addressing the original post, in which PCM was being selected as the output format on the source device.

If your LG TV is converting another format to 7.1 LPCM without being told to, then that is indeed an issue with the TV.

Is it really asking much for Sonos to contact LG and make them aware of the issue for all LG owners that own the Sonos Arc?

No, but it would not count as much as numerous LG TV owners getting in touch and doing the same. If we were to inform them (and perhaps we have already), but there wasn’t a significant volume of LG customers getting in touch with LG about the same issue, they wouldn’t take it as a priority. Customer contact volume is the only thing that will drive them assign the problem with a higher priority. I therefore recommend that you do get in touch with LG.

 

LG TV’s seem to be sending all LPCM 5.1 content as 7.1.

The easiest way to test this is using a Nintendo Switch which only ever sends 5.1 and seeing the Sonos App still shows 7.1. If you use a Sony TV or HDFury it shows correctly as 5.1.

I understand you guys are busy and doing your best, but you haven’t been clear about these issues, considering LG TV’s are amongst the most popular TV’s out there. Everyone having issues and being told by you guys a fix is coming to down convert 7.1 is going to likely be disappointed when your fix doesn’t do what you guys are promising.

Does anyone at Sonos own an LG OLED from the last couple of years? It would help if you could find out whether it’s a bug on your own or LG’s end, considering I haven’t read a lot about this bug with any other sound bars.

1 x Arc, 1 x Beam Gen 2, 1 x Amp, 2 x Sonos In Ceiling Speakers, 2 x Sub, 9 x Sonos Ones, 5 x Symfonisk Lamp
L
Userlevel 5
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Perhaps its not an issue as such, and just how the lg and sonos arc report everything in LPCM as 7.1.

I must admit when the sonos arc reports something as multichannel pcm 7.1 it sounds fine to me.

i don’t have any rears though, just the ARC and Sub here.

 

In any case It would be nice if someone from support could respond, as much as I love sonos, I think their communication could be a lot better.

 

So this down mixing feature/fix do you have any update sonos support?

I’m sure even the sonos ceo tweeted a long while ago that its in the works and in active testing. I can’t find the tweet now though. Please respond sonos, silence is not a good approach.

 

Hey look at this, 3 months ago, posts since and no response from sonos support on anything in this thread for ages.

I have resurrected a few threads on the subjects to keep the possible issue highlighted and to show how poor sonos support has been on giving updated feedback on any progress, they did say they were working/testing this a long while back.

Corry P
Userlevel 7
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Hi @billiejoe87 

Apologies for any confusion, but Sonos staff get trained in Sonos products, networking troubleshooting and Home Theatre troubleshooting (but only from the perspective of Sonos devices). What we don’t get is training on is the capabilities of all TV models on the market, nor XBox, PlayStation or every other kind of input device’s technical capabilities.

I interpreted the original post as an issue with 7.1 LPCM coming from the PS4, and the experience not being great. As we don’t currently support 7.1 LPCM, I suggested that this is likely to be the problem.

If you have a different kind of stream coming from an input device, and your LG TV converts that to 7.1 LPCM without being asked (and in fact converts all stream types to LPCM) then that clearly has nothing to do with Sonos, and I truly don’t know what you can do to prevent it, other than checking for TV updates and contacting LG if that doesn’t help - we have no internal documentation referring to this issue with help there for me to relay to you.

Once we support 7.1 LPCM on the Arc, I presume that this will no longer be an issue, assuming the TV does what it’s not supposed to do properly.

In the meantime, if you disable eARC on your LG TV, that will prevent it from outputting 7.1 LPCM and instead give you the same feed encapsulated within MAT or DD+, which the Arc will play without issue.

 

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
Corry P
Userlevel 7
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Hi @billiejoe87 

“Passthrough”, by it’s very definition, is untouched by the device that’s passing the audio through. If this is not what happens (and it really sounds like it isn’t), then I presume there is a coding error in the TV’s interface so the wrong setting is passed to the audio-handling routines, or an error in those routines themselves.

It is unfortunate.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
B
Userlevel 4
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Hi @billiejoe87 

“Passthrough”, by it’s very definition, is untouched by the device that’s passing the audio through. If this is not what happens (and it really sounds like it isn’t), then I presume there is a coding error in the TV’s interface so the wrong setting is passed to the audio-handling routines, or an error in those routines themselves.

It is unfortunate.

Exactly. I think LG owners need to be aware of this, so they stop expecting the Sonos patch to fix it. I have had an LG CX and G1 which both did this and the reports are universal about it online. The biggest issue is coming from who people expect are going to fix it.

It might help if you guys could communicate that there are 2 different issues here and that your fix will not help issues where the TV is sending 5.1 audio as 7.1.

1 x Arc, 1 x Beam Gen 2, 1 x Amp, 2 x Sonos In Ceiling Speakers, 2 x Sub, 9 x Sonos Ones, 5 x Symfonisk Lamp
Corry P
Userlevel 7
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Hi @billiejoe87 

I completely get your point, but I cannot communicate an issue that we aren’t officially aware of, especially if the issue is on a partner’s hardware.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
L
Userlevel 5
Badge +11

What happened to this issue and supposed fix sonos support?

I’m sure there was talk that a fix was in the works, sounds like that was nonsense. If a fix was in the works it would not be taking this long.

Anyone from Sonos care to update?

R

Another new Arc owner here with a 5.1 setup, and an LGC1 having this issue. 

 

I’m kind of amazed scrolling back how long this has gone on without a fix. Somewhat disheartening. 

Lgc1 does not support dts pass through 

Only c9 or older does

Also the newer lg TVs have this problem with games waiting on a firmware fix

There's a video on YouTube by hdtv test detailing most of the issues in this thread 

It’s crazy to me that LG hasn’t even acknowledged this issue. My guess is, they’d rather just sonos down mix the signal and not have to do anything. Do you know which HDTV video it was where he highlighted these issues?

J

Wow this is super discouraging.  Not annoyed with Sonos but with LG for ignoring the issue.

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