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Trying to wrap my head around Arc, ARC, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus and Atmos



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I want to chime in and give you my two cents:

1.

It was widely reported in the past (when the new Apple TV 4K was released) that the Apple TV 4K (only the 4K model!) plays Dolby Atmos in a “special” format (DOLBY MAT = “Dolby Metadata-enhanced Audio Transmission”). It looks like the reason for that is, that they want to mix the System Sounds and Siri voice over into the sound mix. By doing that, they have to decode the DD+ w Atmos Singal and put it back together with the System Sounds as a “DOLBY MAT” signal witch is a LPCM signal with Atmos information packed in it. This DOLBY MAT signal cannot be transmitted over regular HMDI ARC but only over eARC.

 

2.   

When “reviewers” are reporting, that they managed to get Atmos from Apple TV over a regular ARC connection out of their TV, the reason is probably their TV. Some TVs are apparently able to convert an DOLBY MAT w/Atmos signal into DD+ w/Atmos and send it via regular ARC to a soundbar.  

 

3.

Regarding the observations of @jgatie: Could it be that a recent software update for the Apple TV 4K changed anything in that regard (always converting into DOLBY MAT)?