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I have a sonos beam and two ones set up as surround.  I have a “Proster 5x1 HDMI Switcher with Audio Extractor Support 4K 3D, HDMI Audio Converter with IR Remote, 3 Feet HDMI 1.4 Cable and 3.5mm Male to 2 RCA Female Stereo Audio Cable” that provides HDMI input for the chromecast and Toslink to the Beam.  Sometimes chromecasting youtube runs audio through all the speakers, but other times just the beam.  Is there a way to make it always play through all the speakers.

Well Google/YouTube are supposed to be rolling out surround sound audio. YouTube has mostly been stereo audio only in the past, so it’s probably a case you are encountering some uploaded videos that are encoded in Dolby 5.0/1 audio .. but I’m not sure what the current position is with the YT App update on the Chromecast TV.

I think the easiest thing to do, is to maybe monitor the Audio-In for your Sonos Beam in the Sonos App ‘Settings/System/About My System’ and see what codecs are showing as being pushed to the Beam. If it’s PCM stereo then that will output to your Beam only and if it shows as Dolby Digital 5.1, or similar, then it should also play ‘some’ audio to the rear surround channels too.

You may want to check online aswell to see if the Chromecast YT App now supports surround sound audio and if there are any suggestions for videos to play and test the App output. 

Hope that assists.


I will just add that some ‘trickery’ can also be done by sound engineers with Dolby Pro Logic II stereo audio to also play on HT rear surrounds, so you may ‘possibly’ come across output saying ‘Dolby Stereo 2.0’ or similar, in the Sonos App …and that too ‘may’ also provide some rear channel audio output aswell… but this maybe few and far between. See link:

https://professional.dolby.com/tv/dolby-pro-logic-ii/