Hi @Evander, thanks for sharing this and we greatly appreciate it. We’re always doing our best to provide the best sound experience to our customers. Just let us know if you need anything. Thanks! 

There are also Blu-ray players that can convert on the fly; seems like a much easier solution?

On the other hand if you want to have everything digital this is the way to go!

True (CloneBD is the best one IMO) but I wanted 1:1 copies so I could play the Dolby discs natively and if I switched to a system with DTS-HD support I had the DTS discs too. This is the longer way round but you have more flexibility as the whole disc has been copied over. It did take 12TBs though!!

Hi Krishma thanks for your comment. I would be grateful if you could shed light on the DD+ support for the Arc. Is it limited to 960kbps as I’ve experienced? Or can the Arc play a higher bitrate in DD+? Thanks

You don’t understand correctly. Not clone or store digitally, just play and the audio is automatically converted to Dolby. There have been topics about this here on the Sonos forum too. For instance see https://www.avforums.com/threads/4k-uhd-blu-ray-player-that-decodes-dts-to-dd.2260405/ (a comment there also links to the Sonos community).

I’m aware of this. This is covered in my original post. My current BD player converts to DD5.1 on the fly. The reason I’ve gone to this bother is that DD+ is marginally better than DD5.1. I’m not aware of anything that transcodes to something better than DD5.1. 
 

DD5.1 is DVD sound in the Atmos age. I appreciate that 960kbps DD+ is only marginally better but the point was trying to provide the best work around in terms of sound quality. 

I wasn’t aware of this, thanks for telling!

I have encoded using Hybrid with eAC3 over 960kbps, but can only playback using Emby and not Plex. I have posted this in the Plex forum without any replies. 

Are you saying you can get playback on Sonos Arc with DD+ with a bitrate higher than 960kbps? Does it recognise the sound as DD+ in the Sonos App?

I have no knowledge of Plex or Emby but the best bitrate I achieved was 960kbps DD+ output directly to the Arc.

Yes, through Emby only. I don't use Kodi or VLC so don't know if they work just in case anyone is wondering. I was trying to encode in TrueHD also but the only freeware that found is  limited to stereo THD. 

OK, that is good to know!

I haven't found anything, and am sure it doesn't exist, which transcodes DTS-HD to TrueHD.

On the same topic, I have found a more practical way around this whole thing. Arc supports Atmos; most Blu-Rays are in DTS-HD. However, a lot of studios are re-releasing their titles as 4K discs with Atmos! This is great, you can pick up the 4k disc (if used) relatively cheaply and watch it in 4k with Atmos to boot. I’ve just done this with Angels & Demons, Man of Steel and a few others.

Some 4k released are still DTS-HD, which shows you how capable DTS-HD is.

Yes, I have been gathering different sources, that are from my collection but in different codecs, to remux them together but also get the A/V sync to be proper. 

There is a great freeware to try called Shotcut ( here) where I'm trying different codecs to see what works and what doesn't with the Arc. Next on the list is MLP.

Krishna, I am confused. The Arc is a wonderful sounding device, but the premium that we have paid and the lack of inputs and functionality (not supporting DTS which is WIDELY used on so many titles, many of which are Hollywood staples) is such a glaring omission especially when compared to the competition. 

Does Sonos have any plans in at least giving us DTS capabilities so we don't have to use these ridiculous work around in 2020? 

No, Sonos will never support DTS…also will never give a real answer as to why. Every other TRUE home theater component from the 1980’s and up supports DTS. 

I agree that Sonos will never support DTS. Why they haven’t in the past is a bit of a mystery, but with the Arc I can understand their rationale. Arc is built for the streaming future and DTS doesn’t seem to be playing a role in that. No streaming video or audio service that I’m aware of uses DTS and, moving forward, the vast majority of Arc customers won’t know or care that it doesn’t support DTS because it DOES support the formats used by the services they use to watch TV and movies:  Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, etc. 

I’d further argue that if DTS and Blu-ray Discs are a major part of your movie watching routine then the Arc simply isn’t for you and you should use one of the many, many other very fine home theater solutions out there. 

While I have bought and collected thousands of DVDs and BDs over the years, I’ve long since moved on to a media server-based system (Plex) out of sheer convenience so this whole DTS thing has been a non-issue for me, personally. Not arguing that this is the right solution for everyone out there, but it has proven to be a super flexible, useful, and convenient option for me and many others. 

Oh, and Dolby Digital didn’t come out until 1992 (Batman Returns) and DTS didn’t come out until 1993 (theatrical, starting with Jurassic Park) and 1996 (consumer), so no “true home theater component from the 1980’s” was doing any sort of discrete digital surround sound. ;-) 

Was be over exaggerated, a quick search on the interwebs would have brought the years or even the exact date lol. But.. you get my drift, as far as Sonos being DTS obmissive due to streaming popularity is still a cop out on their part...REGARDLESS.

Thanks for posting this Evander, I’m in a similar position with:

• A stack of blu rays I’d like to backup onto digital
• A Plex server
• A new Arc with sub.

From your post, I should select E-AC3 at 960 with a mixdown of “5.1 channels”, and you said:

the mkv produced was recognised by the Arc to be 5.1 channel Dolby Digital Plus.

How do you work that bit out? I assume it doesn’t generate an ‘ATMOS’ sign in the app?

Also, do you think that is better than doing an auto-passthrough on the TrueHD master?

Just wanting to pick the best option before hitting ‘go’ on the handbrake queue!

I've been doing this for a while, although I'm satisfied with bog standard AC3.

The benefit here is that yon can ditch the disks ;)

I tried to convert some DTS-HD 5.1 tracks to TrueHD 5.1 using ffmpeg. The TrueHD versions play fine in VLC on my computer but when I try to play them through Plex with my Sonos Arc, no audio comes out. I have an eARC connection and “official” 7.1 TrueHD Atmos files work fine; it’s the home-converted 5.1 files that don’t work. Any suggestions? Do we have to somehow limit the TrueHD bitrate for compatibility? Thanks.

Hi Sturman I’ve tried this too, using a great program called XMediaRecode; but this doesn't work. My educated guess on this is as follows.

Firstly there is no free way to convert DTS-HD to Dolby TrueHD; this simply does not exist. I think professional software does, which I have seen about, but that’s serious stuff for serious sound people like broadcasters etc.

Secondly, I think ffmpeg and XMediaRecode do not actually recode the audio to TrueHD, they just change the label or container in the MKV. So your computer will still play the underlying DTS-HD even though its labelled TrueHD because it can actually decode the underlying data. However, it is not in fact TrueHD. Which is why with Sonos, which cannot actually play DTS, it will not play.

I had the same experience using XMediaRecode--worked on my Mac and computers but not Sonos. 

That’s what I think. It makes no sense that free applications could actually convert DTS-HD to TrueHD when even paid consumer applications can’t do this. Also, nowhere has anyone claimed to have done this and it worked. When I researched this, this was an issue people could only work around and not directly convert from one to the other.

Best you can do--as my experience in the original post says, is convert rich lossless 1,500kbps+ DTS-HD to 960kbps DD+ using (eg) XMedia Recode which is really fast and works perfect.

Regards

Hi sorry for my late reply, I did not see this.

Using my method, you get DTS-HD to DD+ 960kbps 5.1 48kHz, max. It does not give you Atmos, because it does not recode the objects into DD+; its just DD+ not Atmos. So, its the best you can do, not anywhere near the same as DTS-HD let alone DTS-X.

Your question; I worked this out because if you go to system information when playing it will say Dolby Digital Plus. It does not give you the bitrate but it is 960kbps as that’s what it was encoded in; I tried going higher and lower etc, and this was the max bitrate it would play; you can encode DD+ into a much higher bitrate but the Arc would not play past 960kbps, it would just be silence. 

PS I used handbrake but I would ditch that if I were you. Here’s why: it transcodes the video which is a waste of time and effort unless you want to save space. If you want a carbon copy of the video do this:

Make an MKV using MakeMKV and then convert the audio into DD+ 960kbps using XMediaRecode (ensure that video, subs etc, are all copy); this is the fastest way to get 100% of the video quality into an MKV with a DD+ audio track. Also, used less space than a HQ rip using handbrake.

Recently, I have started to keep the DTS-HD track as track 2 and transcode it to DD+ as track 1; so if (one can only hope) there is a change and I can play DTS-HD I have that in the MKV and haven't lost it.

I think ffmpeg does encode TrueHD, and I would expect such an open source program like ffmpeg to have no reason to try and pretend it does something it actually doesn't. I just think that since it’s a reverse-engineered encoder the output isn’t always compliant with the spec.

I don't think its a case of pretending, or may be it is, XMediaRecode does the same; I’m not technical enough to know what it does but it sure as hell isn't encoding to TrueHD which is a proprietary Dolby technology; Dolby won't just licence that away to freeware. By all means have a look around, you will see no one is claiming to have converted DTS-hD to TrueHD; if you find otherwise, please let me know!!

Why not convert to TrueHD 5.1? Much better than E-AC3. Also, handbrake will process your video. you could use ffmpeg to get the audio out in TrueHD 5.1, and then use MKVToolNix to mux it back in.

Just a thought...