ATV 4K has been updated and now everything plays in Atmos.

​@AjTrek1 

Thx for compliments… 😉 But in the 80s I was a teenager (from 1972) and hifi became an interesting topic for me. But Heathkit definitely was out of my financial range and also not such popular in Germany I think. 
But I totally agree that soundbars and other hardware shouldn’t be called the same as classic av receivers. 👍🏻

The term ‘[AV] Receiver’ is used here as a general term covering all types of home theater systems. User manuals and support articles are aimed at non-technical users and are therefore deliberately kept simple.

As many things in life imo that depends on the personal point of view and demand for technical accuracy. But yes, often such things are kept simple and not differentiated. That might have pros and cons…

Anyway… I just was talking with ​@AjTrek1 about some technical details as a side fact of the topic. So excuse if too much off topic. 😘

Just to drag this out a bit further 😂….

The “V” in AV receiver stands for Video. A soundbar has nothing to do with Video. I’v never heard of an “AV Soundbar”. In fact since a soundbar only deals with Audio there’s no such nomenclature coined with the letter “A” preceeding Soundbar. Audio only is a given.

As a bit of trivia...the AV Receiver wasn’t introduced until around 1985; the soundbar not until 1998. Plus or minus a year for both.

Not that it matters but I was in my 30’s in 1985 well before “Video Switching” was integrated into a Receiver. In fact the early “Video Switching” aspect was RCA Composite (yellow, red, and white plugs), and the forerunner to HDMI was  Component Video (red/green/blue, + audio).

Most probably have no hands-on experience with such (Component video) or very limited at best. In fact anyone born in 1985 is only 41 years old. Component Video was being replaced by HDMI in 2002 which meant they were only 17 years old (high school).

I get it that most people aren’t my age and only know HDMI and/or AV Receivers. However, having a history does have its advantages to fully appreciate what exists today; and not just in audio/video. It amuses me that people complain about putting dishes in a dishwasher. There was a time when they didn’t exist and at one point they were only afforded by the very rich.

So, no I'm not going to acquiese and say it’s OK to blur the lines and refer to a Soundbar as an AV Receiver or anything referenced as such. There is an AV Receiver and then there’s a Soundbar.

That said...if some 20-50 year self-ordained audio/video expert reviewer doesn’t know the difference...I’m here to correct them. 😂

I might turn this continuous audio setting off, not tested enough yet but it seems like all non atmos content is a bit too loud, even at relatively low volume on the arc ultra. 

I turned it off. As I had no problems before the feature was added.

Same here.
I have now "tested" it since the first beta and experience no improvements/changes. The only difference is that the SONOS App says Atmos for everything.

You could argue why turn it off or on when it has no change for your setup, maybe it will affect our system in the long run when new updates come from both Apple and SONOS. These would be hard to detect if you have disabled Continuous Audio Connection.

​@Peter_254 

I totally agree… I keep the option turned off, too. 
The only „advantage“ I could see at the moment is getting DD5.1 automatically (though Atmos is shown in Sonos App) instead of Multichannel PCM.

What I‘m also wondering about is (with continuous connection turned off) that I only can get DD5.1 by forcing it as output also if Atmos ist turned off in ATV settings. Not sure completely… but I think before it was possible to get DD5.1 without forcing it if Atmos was turned off. But maybe I don’t remember correctly. 

I turned the option on after tvOS26.4, as I was hoping to remove the 1-2 delay before audio kicks in and also in the hope that the Atmos sound drop every 20-30 mins would be eliminated.

I think I achieved the former but the latter sound drop still happens with Atmos content.

So given the Sonos app then believes everything is in Dolby Atmos, and the most annoying element wasn’t overcome, I just turned the setting off...

With the “Continuous Audio Connection” turned off I get all codecs as intended. I think there was too much hype about the feature/issue that probably only affects a selected features. Things were blown out of proportion. JMO.