Contributor I

WARNING: Beam does not support Dolby Digital Plus, That is a BIG deal

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Word of warning for anyone looking at the Beam to start a 5.1 surround sound system, it will NOT work ideally for any streaming box except the Apple TV. I would suggest really doing your research and/or staying away from the Beam if you want a home theater solution.

The Beam does not support Dolby Digital Plus (DD+) and only supports PCM (poor quality) or Dolby Digital. Why does that matter? DD+ is the current standard. Dolby (the only thing Sonos support) sounds good but is hardly used anymore by anything halfway modern. PCM is the audio equivilent to standard definition TV.

DD+ is the de facto standard for streaming boxes and services. Hulu, Netflix, HBO and I want to say Plex support this standard and only this standard. Those services do not use Dolby Digital. To get Dolby Digital, that means the stream must be downconverted (transcoded) on the fly by either your streaming device or your TV before reaching the Beam. If you do not convert, you are forced to use the poor quality PCM.

Now here's the rub. Few TVs downconvert. If you have one that does? Great! You should have few problems. Thing is though today, few streaming boxes do as well. In fact, the only one that does that I can tell is the Apple TV 4K. The nVidia Shield does not, nor does any modern Roku device. The 2016 Ruku Ultra does, but the 2017 and 2018 models do NOT. Looking at Roku forums, a software update from Roku may have removed that option thus meaning no Roku converts DD+ to D.

I can not believe Sonos is selling a device, geared for home theater, that does not support what is a very common standard. Every single streaming device support DD+ along with all the major players including Netflix and Hulu. It is THE standard, yet Sonos does not support it.

Keep this in mind as you're researching. I find it very disappointing, and will be returning my Sonos products.

Dolby Digital +

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Ken_Griffiths

I just want to add I never ever expected my Sonos Beam to support any form of Dolby Atmos, when I purchased it 18 months, or so, ago, whether that be the DD+ (lossy) version of Atmos, or the TrueHD (lossless) version.

In a similar/identical way, I never expected the Beam to support other codecs either, like DTS, for example. It was certainly never in the spec. nor was it in the Beam's literature.

So I’m struggling to understand what this thread is really all about?

The majority of TV's with DD+ support, also support DD 5.1 and the majority of Netflix/Amazon/Apple streaming Movie Apps available around the time of the Beams launch date were DD 5.1. In fact a majority of the movies on those platforms are still DD 5.1, albeit the Atmos (DD+) titles are now beginning to creep more and more onto those platforms, at an additional cost.

Assuming the HDMI-ARC port on the Beam is 2.0 (I don’t know if it is) then there’s certainly a chance of a software/firmware upgrade which, one day, might allow the Beam to support Atmos DD+, but there’s no way it can ever support Atmos TrueHD, unless the HDMI Port is version 2.1 eARC capable.

At this moment in time though, I’m happy with the fact thd Beam supports DD 5.1, as that is the reason I purchased it. It is doing what it was designed to do.

Note also, that aswell as upgrading to the “Netflix (more expensive) UltraHD” service to get access to DD+ movies, the Netflix App that plays them too has to support DD+ and some TV's, like LG, (just as an example), prior to 2017 may support the DD+ codec, but their actual built-in Netflix and Amazon Apps don’t .. so in some cases users 'may' wish to upgrade their TV’s too, particularly if the hardware ports will not pass-thru the DD+ audio format.

At the moment Atmos DD+ is only just coming into play with the streaming Movie services and so I don’t see the point in criticising an 18 month old Sonos Beam for not supporting it, particularly as it was never ever part of its original specification.

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Aceawesome

Lyricist I

I’d be happy with just DD5.1, I’m only getting PCM and you can easily hear the difference in my Beam with two Sonos Ones (sucks/hollow) vs my Yamaha YSP 2200 (full and crisp)

i have a PS4 and FiOs One box connected to my LG65ef9500 and my ARC out to the Beam w/ with the Play Ones connected for surround. The STB and PS4 both output as PCM but the native Netflix on the LG tv are the only things outputting are DD5.1.

what’s wrong? Is the LG tv not able to pass through the DD5.1 from my STB and PS4 but still output properly from its native Netflix app? Makes no sense.

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controlav

Lead Maestro

what’s wrong? Is the LG tv not able to pass through the DD5.1 from my STB and PS4 but still output properly from its native Netflix app? Makes no sense.

Exactly. Many TV engineers were confused by their lawyers a few years ago, and misinterpreted the HDCP rules. They thought that if the TV gets a DD 5.1 signal over HDMI, they would be unable to simply send that audio over optical as-is, so they told the HDMI source device to only send stereo (when optical output was enabled). However for internal apps (eg Netflix in your case) they could emit DD 5.1 over optical no problem.

This misunderstanding has been fixed by almost everyone now, but there are a lot of TVs from this period that need "hacks" to get DD 5.1 over optical for HDMi inputs: LGs need service menu changes, Samsung need EDID fakers, etc.

(I say "optical" here from personal experience, but HDMI-ARC is the same signal over a different physical transport. I would have thought that a TV new enough to support ARC would have a sane HDCP understanding, but in this TV I guess not).

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Author of the leading independent Sonos apps for Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows and Xbox.

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Aceawesome

Lyricist I

This misunderstanding has been fixed by almost everyone now, but there are a lot of TVs from this period that need "hacks" to get DD 5.1 over optical for HDMi inputs: LGs need service menu changes, Samsung need EDID fakers, etc.

Great info!

I looked into Youtube and there's a "hack" to get into the LG system and change the settings to passthrough 5.1. Has anyone tried it? I have an iphone and the app needs IR blaster. I'm afraid to brick my beautiful OLED LG!

Any other hacks work? can calling customer service and having them change it work?

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controlav

Lead Maestro

I looked into Youtube and there's a "hack" to get into the LG system and change the settings to passthrough 5.1. Has anyone tried it?

I didn't use a YouTube video, I used this page http://blog.workingsi.com/2012/02/hacking-lg-55lw5700-tv.html

I bought a $10 remote and accessed my LG service menu to change the setting. Mine is a 55LW5700.

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Author of the leading independent Sonos apps for Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows and Xbox.

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Tejs Dyrvig Ernst

It is horrifying to keep reading posts from users with this issue and then watch users like Ryan arrogantly stating that most TV's will automatically downmix Dolby Digital Plus to Dolby Digital.

I have not seen a single TV that will do that - in any price range - when the TV receives a signal from HDMI and passes it on to the Playbar, Playbase or Beam via optical or HDMI. I even put up a threat to see if anyone has ever seen such a TV but came up short.

What many TVs will do is allow you to choose Dolby Digital for the TVs build-in apps.

If you get your stream from Chromecast or similar - you are out of luck. Only workaround is using an Apple TV, PS4 or similar that will do the conversion for you - Sonos will definitely not.

Sonos is sticking with the one single audio format for surround that was already aging when the Playbar was introduced in 2012(!!).

And handshake is not a magical timemachine that sends any modern audioformat back in time to the mid-2000, when non-HD DVDs and Dolby Digital 5.1 was in fashion.

Handshake is nothing more than a requestfeature: the Beam will request Dolby Digital 5.1 and receive if it is available. If it is not, e.g. because you are watching Netflix from Chromecast, the Beam will get PCM (stereo).

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Outburst

Enthusiast II

Working fine for me on two Philips TVs with a Beam and a Playbase so you maybe didn’t search hard enough. Also it’s part of the Dolby specs, there is not conversion happening, the TV will just output the Dolby Digital 5.1 core of the Dolby Digital Plus stream.

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Tejs Dyrvig Ernst

Working fine for me on two Philips TVs with a Beam and a Playbase so you maybe didn’t search hard enough. Also it’s part of the Dolby specs, there is not conversion happening, the TV will just output the Dolby Digital 5.1 core of the Dolby Digital Plus stream.

At least I have tried two LG sets from their 2018 line and an older Sony with no luck. Works fine for build-in apps but doesn't work with Chromecast via HDMI.

So just to be clear, you are getting Dolby Digital 5.1 streaming Netflix from Chromecast connected to HDMI via your TV?

You are not streaming directly from the TV, from an Apple TV or some other device that does the conversion for you?

If so, please list the model no. of your TV as I know a lot of Sonos-users would be interested in this.

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106rallye

Chromecast and PS4 both gave no DD with my TV (Samsung UE46D8000) too. Not sure this was DD+ related though. The PS4 was cured using an audio extractor/embedder (so now I’m using the audio from the optical feed - a clue that it could be DD+ related, but I never had any confirmation on this); for the Chromecast I couldn’t be bothered.

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Outburst

Enthusiast II

@Tejs Dyrvig Ernst Yes, I am and was getting Dolby Digital from all my sources, also from a Chromecast, but that is not used anymore and was replaced with a FireTV Stick. Netflix and also Amazon Video (not sure right now, if they use DD+) are working fine for me and I get Dolby Digital+. As said, there is no conversion/transcoding happening, Dolby Digital is just the core of Dolby Digital + and at least my two Philips TVs will output that just fine.

I’m using a Philips 32PFK4101/12 and 50PUS6272/12 and these are not even high price models, the first one is not even a smart TV. In general I think Philips is fine when it comes to audio.

@106rallye Your TV seems to an older model. The entry and basic Samsung TVs back in the days didn’t support Dolby Digital passthrough and I think that is what’s causing the issues for you. More modern Samsung TVs do support this feature now (I think from 2017 onwards).

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