Just for clarification purposes. The Apple TV etc. are outputting to the input on the switch which is connected to an input on your TV? The Beam is connected to the HDMI-ARC connection on the TV that works as an output for sound.

Hi, sorry, yes, you’re right. 
 

I’ve accidentally marked this thread as answered. Can this be undone?

Can a mod unmark this topic as answered?

Is this something that Sonos support could help with?

It might be. Have you called them? 

As a starting point for trouble-shooting, I’d bypass the hdmi switch and connect the PC directly to the tv, then run the Dolby Access configuration again. If the Dolby Access application successfully configures then you should be able to select Dolby Atmos for Home Theatre as a sound output as well as the Windows native ones.

Windows only has native support for uncompressed PCM so

If your TV has eArc then you should be able to select Stereo, 5.1 (Not sure if the beam accepts a 7.1 input and downmixes)

If your TV only has Arc, then you will only have Stereo.

Within Windows your display device (TV) properties should show a list of supported audio formats. This is where you would see a list of things like Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus. Playing back supported formats is down to the software you use to play media with.

The Apple TV/PS 5 playing multi-channel would suggest the TV settings are correct. Plugging the PC directly into the TV removes the hdmi switch as a potential cause and help narrow down if you are facing a PC configuration issue or the switch is interfering.

My PC occasionally loses its speaker setup and won’t let me select 7.1 if my TV is slow switching its inputs if I let it auto switch, suggesting the HDMI handshake/feature support query doesn’t work quite right. A reboot of the pC or making sure the right TV input and audio output is selected first before starting the PC never has an issue.

Thank you so much for the replies.

So I only have a HDMI ARC port. Does this mean I have no chance at 5.1 with my PC? Or is there some kind of converter I can use to force eARC from my ARC port?

I’ve connected my PC directly into a HDMI slot and this didn’t change anything.

Also used an older version of Dolby Access (3.14) which didn’t change anything. 

When checking my TV’s device properties in windows it shows me these supported formats:

- DTS Audio
- Dolby Digital Plus
- Dolby Digital

I think there is a using Sonos with your computer topic around here somewhere 

If you mean this one 

it basically ignores PCs connected to TVs using hdmi, Dolby Atmos, lossless multi-channel pcm and assumes PCs need to use analogue or optical cables. The world has moved on since it was written 3 years ago.

Thanks again for the replies guys.

I’m finding it ridiculous that all audio plays as Stereo PCM despite telling Windows I have a 5.1 system. It knows exactly what kind of channels I use and where they’re placed. I don’t even care about Dolby Atmos - I just want some form of surround sound!

In your earlier post you mentioned the Windows PC shows these supported codecs:

- DTS Audio
- Dolby Digital Plus
- Dolby Digital

Have you tried selecting the latter ‘Dolby Digital’ (only) as the PC output - also set the TV’s HDMI-ARC digital sound out to ‘pass-through’ and see if that might solve things for you.

I didn’t know I was able to select specific sound outputs in the audio output device properties. Is that what you’re saying? I thought it was just listing what the audio output device is capable of. Just wanted to check my understanding! 

Trying to figure out how to check passthrough settings now. It’s a Sony Bravia Android TV. I saw a setting that asked for Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital Plus and the latter is selected. Saw another setting regarding compression of audio output and bitstream was an option.

From the supported formats shown, for watching movies/tv from things like Netflix/Amazon or DVDs/bluerays with Dolby digital plus then like the Apple TV you should be able to get 5.1 if the player software supports bitstreaming.

Unfortunately Dolby are light on details about what the Dolby Atmos for Home Theatre supports or requires. I would have expected it to be able to use both DD+ over arc and uncompressed over eArc depending what the hardware supports, but it might only work with lossless over eArc, which your TV doesn’t support. My TV has eArc so unfortunately I don’t have anything I could test what my PC does via arc.

There are additional boxes you can get, such as a hdfury arcana/arcana2, which would connect between your hdmi switch and the TV. It has a separate eArc port the beam can be plugged into so audio from anything plugged into the hdmi switch isn’t limited by the TV anymore.

There are also more expensive versions like the hdfury vrroom/vrroom2 which would replace your switch with a single box that combines a 4 port hdmi switch and the arcana’s separate TV + eArc outputs.

While I haven’t personally used a hdfury style device, other forum members have them, so hopefully they will see the thread and can provide their experience with them. Someone recently posted their connection layout and was using one.

I know members of a different forum I’m on also use hdfury devices to connect soundbars to sources with eArc when the tv only has arc or doesn’t support passthrough of all the audio formats they want.

Those aren’t outputs you can select as Windows PC audio outputs. Windows only supports PCM or MS sonic/spatial audio formats for use as outputs natively. The list shows encoding formats supported that a PC can send if software can bitstream them from media or software/games encode and output the audio in one of those encoding formats. Windows itself won’t convert or output in those formats, only PCM

Dolby Access is software written by Dolby, which uses the MS spatial audio libraries to output in Atmos. With the software not enabling Atmos for Amzypop, I suspect Dolby are only supporting Dolby MAT on Windows, so adding the Atmos metadata to the Windows PCM output rather than creating a Dolby digital plus or TrueHD Atmos stream.

I did find this on YouTube, but it’s not something I’ve tried, personally speaking… posted for info only:

I have a Bravia Google TV so can check my settings tomorrow. Off the top of my head I don’t think I’ve touched the audio settings and just left them on auto.

Dolby digital plus output is the one you want selected.

Generally you want bitstream as the option for audio where it is shown. That way the TV will just send it to the beam without trying to do anything to it.

From the encoding formats you see in windows properties and with the Apple/PS5 sending Dolby Digital 5.1 to the beam, your TV settings appear correct.

I think the issue with the PC is Windows only outputs uncompressed PCM as audio, which hdmi arc only supports in stereo.

I’ll also check what format the Dolby Atmos application is sending from my PC, but from your description I suspect it is Dolby Mat, which is PCM + Metadata. As HDMI Arc only supports uncompressed stereo, that could be why the Dolby Access application doesn’t configure and setup if it needs multi channel PCM.

Thank you so much again, I really appreciate it. I think mirroring your TV settings would help a lot.

sorry I was wrong about Bitstream being an option. I’ve added a photo of an option of potential interest I see. 
 

Auto 1 should work, there’s no harm trying auto 2 and switching it back if it makes no difference.

Always output in PCM means the TV would decode Dolby/DTS formats to uncompressed pcm. With only having hdmi arc it would also downmix everything to stereo.

This is a summary of my TV settings and the values set. I expect yours will look very similar (apart from mine having an eArc setting)

I’m confident your pc setting are correct and you will need to add the codecs to your PC. The video ​@Ken_Griffiths provided is a reasonable overview, but I would download the unofficial drivers from https://puresoftapps.blogspot.com/2018/04/realtek-apo-driver.html rather than the YouTube presenters private version.

The Reddit htpc community maintain a wiki, which covers adding Dolby Digital for gaming and puresoftapps are the community trusted/recommended source for the driver package and supporting software.

Dolby used to provide a Dolby digital live package, which hardware manufacturers such as creative used to license for on-the-fly Dolby digital output. Like the original DTS codecs, the Dolby Digital (AC3) codec patents expired. This allowed software developers and the pc community to create and release unofficial Dolby Digital encoders without any legal risks.

Section 2 in their wiki is a link to the same puresoftapps website above.

https://r-htpc.github.io/wiki/audio#how-do-i-configure-my-htpc-to-output-sound-for-games-to-my-sound-system

Whether the Dolby Access Home Theatre would then provide Atmos on top or if it would cause too much of a delay I don’t know. 

Thank you so much for the photo. I don’t appear to have the Pass through mode option:

I’m going to follow the YouTube video now and use the drivers you’ve linked to. Thank you so much. Will report back. 

I’m in the FX Configurator part of the tutorial. I’m not sure which endpoint speaker to select out of the available options:

When my sound devices are in the first picture. Sound comes through via Sony TV, I disabled Realrek(R) Audio a few days ago as it didn’t provide sound, my pc doesn’t have built-in speakers.

Sorry if any of these are silly questions. The gentleman in the tutorial said choose your endpoint output and selected his Realtek speaker device. But I wasn’t sure for my case. And I see 2 Realtek speaker devices in the FX Configurator list.

OMG I watched more of the video and he explains to select the TV. I’m so sorry. Will continue on with the tutorial!

No worries. Unfortunately hdmi-arc and windows is still a weak point for PCs connected directly to TVs.

VRR adoption by TVs has made vsync/screen tearing mostly a non-issue, eArc allows uncompressed PCM which games and windows use a non-issue, 4K120, HDR is nice for some games.

With hdmi-arc it’s in a bit of choose between the best for audio or video but not both. PC → Audio device → TV is best for audio, but PC → TV → arc Audio device is best for video if the tv has vrr/hdr/4k120 support.

Thank you again for your help.

I unfortunately can’t get the driver to successfully install. I chose Dolby Home Theatre like in the tutorial. I’ve repeated the steps a few times, uninstalling and scanning Registry as in the video before restarting and reinstalling and there’s no Dolby tab in the Sony TV audio device’s properties, or Dolby as an option in the Advanced tab.

The gentleman who uploaded the YouTube video very kindly did tech support over Discord with me. 3 hours later we got surround sound working, following the instructions in the video. With the caveat that I needed to downgrade to Windows 10 as Windows 11 was blocking the driver install. 
 

Very happy. Thank you so much for your help everyone. I’ll mark the comment with the YouTube video as the solution.