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Sonos ARC and SAMSUNG QLED 2019 with one connect (q950r, q90r)


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Hello, 

I plan to acquire the sonos arc and own a Samsung q950r 2019 TV.

 

This TV isn’t eARC (perhaps in the future), but is “atmos compatible”, with 2.1 hdmi ports.

This is not quite clear what will happen (atmos or not atmos?) :

  • if I have a atmos source (4K BD, apple tv, PS5) plugged on one hdmi port and sonos ARC on ARC hdmi
  • if i stream from one of the TV apps (netflix, disney+….) (but there i guess it will be loss atmos = DD+?)

Your answer for the passthrough atmos is very important and will lead to a sad or not decision of buying this bar.

  

Thank you very much for you answer,

 

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Best answer by 106rallye 9 June 2020, 19:19

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17 replies

Basically, Atmos is an audio format that can be delivered under two different codecs, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby True HD.  DD+ is lossy and is usually found in streaming sources, which would be your TVs smart apps, AppleTV (which also does Dolby MAT for it’s Apple apps to complicate things) and your PS5.  DD+ can be transmitted by ARC, so your TV should be passing through these sources  Whether it does or not is a question for the TV manufacturer.   TrueHD, lossless,  is usually on blu ray disks, so that’s your BD player or discs you play through PS5.  TrueHD requires eARC, so you won’t be able to get atmos from those sources.

 

For me, I rarely watch discs anymore as streaming works great.  When I do, it’s usually older DVDs and BDs that are not in Atmos anyway.  I don’t know that  I’m missing much sound quality between DD+ and TrueHD.

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Basically, Atmos is an audio format that can be delivered under two different codecs, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby True HD.  DD+ is lossy and is usually found in streaming sources, which would be your TVs smart apps, AppleTV (which also does Dolby MAT for it’s Apple apps to complicate things) and your PS5.  DD+ can be transmitted by ARC, so your TV should be passing through these sources  Whether it does or not is a question for the TV manufacturer.   TrueHD, lossless,  is usually on blu ray disks, so that’s your BD player or discs you play through PS5.  TrueHD requires eARC, so you won’t be able to get atmos from those sources.

 

For me, I rarely watch discs anymore as streaming works great.  When I do, it’s usually older DVDs and BDs that are not in Atmos anyway.  I don’t know that  I’m missing much sound quality between DD+ and TrueHD.

 

Hello, thank you very much for your answer. 

The only interest for me for the PS5 is games + 4K UHD blu ray, not streaming services as they are already in smart tv.. I hope games and discs can output DD+…

Same question for nvidia shield actually 

I don’t think any discs are in DD+, TrueHD only.  PS5 games, I have no idea.  Doing a quick search and it seems still to be unknown whether the PS5 will even support Atmos.

https://www.whathifi.com/us/advice/ps5-release-date-price-specs-and-news-for-the-playstation-5

 

I know little about nvidia, someone else should address that.

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Hello, sonos arc available tomorrow, and still no answer...I won’t risk anything at this price so it may be new sony atmos bar instead probably, as it is equipped with 2 hdmi it’s more safe. 

Too bad sonos is so quiet, this question is asked on multpile websites and samsung tvs owners are in doubts (also because of all beams problems on these tvs)

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You’ve had two answers from a user on this user forum. You are asking a lot: even if Sonos would answer you I, the passthrough is a Samsung function not a Sonos one. The question what different devices deliver as output to your TV can only be answered by their manufacturers. I’ve read elsewhere that recent Samsung TV’s do not pass through TrueHD, but do pass through DD+, that can use compressed Atmos. As @melvimbe says their are no discs in DD+ that we know off.

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I’m sorry if my tones “sounds” annoyed or angry, it is not. And thank you for your answers of course.

Actually, I though the first answer was not sure about 4K discs & PS5, so I was waiting for an official answer (or from a samsung tv owner test),  

So if answer is no atmos from 4K blu ray discs because they are trueHD, then this bar is not for me (and believe me I am soooo sad...). And as you mentionned, as the PS5 wont come out until several months, I prefer to get a bar where LPCM or atmos trueHD sources can be handled to avoid having stereo sound on a 900€ soudbar!

 

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@Rom7475 Apologies accepted. Maybe I read your comments wrong - I am not an native English speaker.

To you question: I am not sure any soundbar will play Atmos since your TV does not put this through to the soundbar.

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I have the arc and samsung d900r and can confirm dolby atmos works with netflix (all be it quite buggy to get going)which passes atmos via DD+ but will not pass it through any other native apps, apple tv or any external devices such as games consoles or UHD players. Whilst I think a second HDMI port would have been sensible, I personally blame samsung for failing to install earc on their flagship tvs and for their poor handling of codecs in general. 

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Thank you so much for your (unfortunate!) answer.

I feared that would be the case. 

Please could you explain “all be it quite buggy to get going”

 

And  also “will not pass it through any other native apps” does it mean disney+ , amazon wont pass DD+? 

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Unless your TV has eARC it will not be able to pass anything higher than DD+ to the Arc, although it sounds from a previous post that it won’t even pass DD+ via the build in apps which is a. It strange for a relatively new high end TV. Maybe Samsung just need to update the build in apps. 

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Unless your TV has eARC it will not be able to pass anything higher than DD+ to the Arc, although it sounds from a previous post that it won’t even pass DD+ via the build in apps which is a. It strange for a relatively new high end TV. Maybe Samsung just need to update the build in apps. 

this is very confusing, i thought dd+ could carry atmos...

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Yep so the Netflix app passes Atmos via DD+, but for me to get it work I had to go to another app, change the settings to DD+ then go back to Netflix and then Atmos showed up in the descriptions, for whatever reason changing the tv settings whilst on Netflix didn’t work, don’t ask me ask Samsung?! Gave same advice to another poster and it worked for them (smart drive also Q900). Disney+ and amazon prime should work through DD+ but apparently it is a Samsung issue and Atmos doesn’t appear to be working with them full stop regardless of the soundbar. As for Apple TV and other streaming devices it seems Samsung is unable to change the Dolby mat codec to something it can work with so no Atmos there either. Samsung have really dropped the ball compared to LG here, I’m tempted to see what I can sell mine for to pick up LG. 

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Yep so the Netflix app passes Atmos via DD+, but for me to get it work I had to go to another app, change the settings to DD+ then go back to Netflix and then Atmos showed up in the descriptions, for whatever reason charging the tv settings whilst on Netflix didn’t work, don’t ask me ask Samsung?! Have same advice to another poster and it work for them (smart drive also Q900). Disney+ and amazon prime should work through DD+ but apparently it is a Samsung issue and Atmos doesn’t appear to be working with them full stop regardless of the soundbar. As for Apple TV and other streaming devices it seems Samsung is unable to change the Dolby mat codec to something it can work with so no Atmos there either. Samsung have really dropped the ball compared to LG here, I’m tempted to see what I can sell mine for to pick up LG. 

Thank you so much, this is very helpful.

I agree with you, was a samsung happy customer, but next tv will be panasonic or LG.

About the arc, finally too bad there’s no hdmi in, I’ll wait & see what comes from other brands or perhaps a future ARC V2...

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New Arcana device from HDFury solves the problem. https://hdfury.com/product/4k-arcana-18gbps/

Device separates out full audio up to Dolby Atmos over Dolby TrueHD from any external HDMI source and sends it to the Sonos Arc and passthrough full 4k video up to 18gbps!  They are accepting pre orders now.

Userlevel 2
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New Arcana device from HDFury solves the problem. https://hdfury.com/product/4k-arcana-18gbps/

Device separates out full audio up to Dolby Atmos over Dolby TrueHD from any external HDMI source and sends it to the Sonos Arc and passthrough full 4k video up to 18gbps!  They are accepting pre orders now.

I look forward to seeing how this works especially if the earc update never arrives for my tv or they do a poor job of it, both fairly likely with Samsung 

Userlevel 1
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New Arcana device from HDFury solves the problem. https://hdfury.com/product/4k-arcana-18gbps/

Device separates out full audio up to Dolby Atmos over Dolby TrueHD from any external HDMI source and sends it to the Sonos Arc and passthrough full 4k video up to 18gbps!  They are accepting pre orders now.

I look forward to seeing how this works especially if the earc update never arrives for my tv or they do a poor job of it, both fairly likely with Samsung 

Another benefit of Arcana is that it will pass Dolby Vision (DV) to your Samsung tv As Samsung backs HDR10 and not DV

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If the tv can only process hdr10 what would the benefit be of the arcana sending it DV?