Question

Sonos DD and DTS

  • 22 December 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 1315 views

Was wondering would a toslink to hdmi converter be possible to use on sonos system? And would this allow for DTS pass through?

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4 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +21
I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish here. When you say TOSLINK to HDMI, that makes me think that you're taking an optical connection and converting it to HDMI. That wouldn't work with the Playbar or Playbase since they don't have HDMI inputs.

If you want to do the opposite - extract the audio from an HDMI connection - then you want an HDMI audio extractor. Then you could run optical from the extractor to the Sonos device. However, extractors don't convert the audio format... they pass it through in its original form. So DTS audio would be passed as DTS, which the Playbar and Playbase aren't able to decode. You would need to make sure that your source device is able to output only a Dolby Digital signal if you want to get surround sound.
Thank you that makes sense. I'm just wondering as i was reading that the sonos system doesn't support dolby + or dolby true sound. I'd love to know a way around this as i really don't want to be buying new equipment. Would be great if sonos brought out something that would resolve this so the customer doesn't need to buy new product.
Userlevel 7
Badge +21
That's correct. The Playbar and Playbase only support PCM Stereo and Dolby Digital (2.0 or 5.1). Dolby Digital+, Dolby TrueHD, DTS, and other variations of either company's audio encoding technologies are not supported.

There's nothing saying that they couldn't roll out a new product at any time that supports some or all of the various encoding formats... but as myself or any other long-time Sonos user can tell you, Sonos doesn't spill their plans about the future until they're good and ready to do so.
We will just have to wait and see. I'm thinking they will bring out some sort of device, because it would be pretty expensive for them to mass produce new speakers with these capabilities plus the customer base would be greater and product sales would increase from new and old customers. Fingers crossed!