So the Beam can at least tell if it is receiving Dolby Digital Plus!

  • 10 February 2019
  • 8 replies
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I was playing around with the settings in my new Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K, and I saw this on my phone while checking what audio in the Beam was receiving!:D

Edit: It shows that the audio in is Dolby Digital Plus in the controller app on my phone, but I get no sound! Just to clarify!;)

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Check the audio settings on your TV.


Is Dolby Digital Plus content backward-compatible?

Because Dolby Digital Plus is built on core Dolby Digital technologies, content that is encoded with Dolby Digital Plus is fully compatible with the millions of existing home theaters and playback systems worldwide equipped for Dolby Digital playback. Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks are easily converted to a 640 kbps Dolby Digital signal without decoding and reencoding, for output via S/PDIF. The 640 kbps bit rate, which is higher than the standard 448 kbps used on DVDs, is fully compatible with all existing Dolby Digital decoding products such as A/V receivers, and can provide higher-than-DVD quality from Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks when played back through existing systems.

https://www.dolby.com/uploadedFiles/Assets/US/Doc/Professional/dolby-digital-plus-faq.pdf
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Cheers, thanks, I don't have an actual issue. I was just pointing out that the Beam can detect Dolby Digital Plus even if it cannot decode it right now. I deliberately sent it a dolby digital plus signal and was surprised to see that it was registered at all in the app, especially as my Beam is connected over optical cable!
S/PDIF is theoretically able to carry Dolby Digital Plus at lower bitrates, but for most applications the bandwidth is insufficient. If there's no sound then perhaps the source device is confused and/or a downmix is not successful.

Setting the Fire Stick to output Dolby Digital only should work.
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Is the Beam connected via HDMI or optical? (I didn't think optical could do any form of DD+?)
Is the Beam connected via HDMI or optical? (I didn't think optical could do any form of DD+?)
On the German board a few people have claimed they are getting DolbyDigital out of DolbyAtmos over optical.
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On re-reading Wikipedia it seems that optical can do DD+ at low bitrate. Huh.
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Mine is connected over optical! That is interesting alright!
Pretty sure that Sonos still can't accept/interpret the extended data that's in the "Plus" part of that signal. It's only dealing with the data that is the same as Dolby Digital.