Contributor I

Sonos ARC and PC Gaming and Dolby Atmos - Ouch

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
May 8, 2020
15 replies
10520 views

Hi everyone

First post here - I pre-ordered the ARC fully knowing that it only has 1 HDMI-eARC port and its gonna be mega pain for PC users to Dolby Atmos to it unless you are gaming on a TV with eARC.

So let’s start trying to find solutions…. I have started a new petition (as futile as it may be...) at nvidia to ask them to natively support hdmi audio only output on the gpus (given most of the monitor us PC gamers using gsync (or freesync-compatible) would have a spare HDMI slot) - please go sign here if you wish: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/feed/377326/native-hdmi-audio-support-sonos-beam-and-sonos-a/

As for my main question, has anyone tried using an audio extractor and successfully extracted a dolby atmos audio stream? Given that the ARC hasn’t been released, i figured someone out there must have tried it on an Atmos AVR.

Ps. i’m really excited for the ARC to arrive. Can’t wait to sit in front of it to game.

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PowdeRiver

Lyricist III

I’m sure y’all know by now but for anyone else referencing this page the device is made by hdfury called Arcana

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kyroniusAuthor

Contributor I

I’m sure y’all know by now but for anyone else referencing this page the device is made by hdfury called Arcana

it looks really cool! i pinged them on the avforum and they said it will work for hdmi sources from the PC.

sadly i just bought a creative ae-7 for DDL 5.1 via toslink. not sure if i wanna spend another 150usd just yet for the arcana. will wait for post-launch reviews.

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PowdeRiver

Lyricist III

Nice, The arcana can get you atmos 5.1.2 content for your arc

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Mitchell Stringer

Contributor I

I dont see how you’re going to get Atmos from your PC into the ARC.

Considering how most products output audio, like a GPU/GameConsole/Apple TV Box/Sattelite TV Box etc - your best chance at ARC working for you is to plug into it directly. Because there is only a single port - it means the ARC soundbar was design to be used with a TV where the TV is also the source, i.e you are playing content using your TV’s built in apps, so not using a GPU/GameConsole/Apple TV Box/Sattelite TV Box

Everything else you try falls outside this products’s intended use and will either not work or be extremely difficult - it then comes down to is your TV capable of re-processing your source into the source content ARC wants (i.e can your TV do the job of a AV Receiver) and yeah... well goodluck with that bro.

Thanks! It’s likely to be mission impossible… but maybe if we can draw Sonos attention to their being a market for such a device that can encode/embed ARC audio signals (without a TV)… It seems at least one company is doing it, so it can’t be that far away.

When the Arc arrives i’ll just use optical and live with DDL. Will then spend sometime slowly acquiring the sub the ones for surround before trying to figure out Atmos on the pc. Hopefully by then someone industrious can figure this and let me throw my money at them for the solution <^_^.

I Don’t wan’t any money haha, but I might have a free solution, it involves using modified audio drivers. I did this with my Sonos Playbar to enable Dolby Digital Live from the motherboards optical out (the motherboards optical out does not support DDL “technically”)

I had to do this because a windows 10 update broke my Creative card and audio would drop out every few minutes.

Anyway, The software and drivers are a bit of a grey area, because they allow to enable all sound formats you choose to any “exit point” which is great, but bypasses Dolbys licencing, if you are morally ok with that, like I am, then it’s fine.

what you do is grab the modified driver for your device, a great option here would be to use the on-board HDMI port for your motherboard if you have one. You enable support for the audio formats you want with the loader software DDL, DD, Atmos etc… Set the HDMI port as the exit point, and set windows 10 Default audio to the HDMI port.

it’s a bit janky, but i have been using it for over a year without issue for DDL, i can’t test if it works with Atmos, because i only have the playbar.

The whole process is a bit more involved and will probably take an hour or so to set up. And would take me a while to type it all.

But if you are interested, this should get you started, this isn’t my software, use at your own risk.

The post talks about DDL, but you can now set it up with Atmos.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/260297/petition-add-5171-dolby-digital-live-dts-connect-/1924339/

https://puresoftapps.blogspot.com/2018/04/realtek-apo-driver.html?_sm_au_=iVV2n3F5S7QPRNTVvNjGHK6jsQv41

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/making-audio-enhancers-work-on-windows.244309/page-44#post-3945750

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relax

Contributor I

Having same issue. Got PC as source and Sonos Arc+Sub+One(pair). I want get from my PC source atmos sound. So i’ve got 3 solutions:

1)PC through USB to Nvdia Shield Pro after that trough hdmi 2.1 to monitor and separetly to hd fury arcana to sonos arc through hdmi 2.1.

2)PC to AV reciever(denon avr x3600h) by USB and after from av to monitor and sonos arc.

3)PC to soundcard and from it to the sonos arc. But in this case i dont’ if there such sound card exist which support atmos.

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