My Easiest, Best $80 DTS Solution For Arc = Samsung

  • 18 March 2021
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I didn’t know about Sonos not supporting DTS until after I had purchased my Arc Surround System--ugh--and it never occurred to me that a premium audio company like Sonos wouldn’t support what remains the leading form of audio on what remains the best viewing experience for movies: UHD and Blu-ray discs. 

I have an Oppo 205 and was hopeful initially when I read various people report that Oppo does DTS to DD conversion on the fly. Let me confirm that IT. DOES. NOT. And I’m not sure why this misinformation persists, even in the face of Oppo stating unequivocally that they don’t offer this capability.

Then I read a number of more complicated workarounds on Sonos and other audio forums, but I didn’t want to go through that much trouble kludging a solution for a system on which I had just spent $$$$. 

Finally I arrived at the Samsung blu-ray player solution--several models do DTS to DD conversion on the fly--but avoiding the crazy typical prices on ebay or Amazon for these long discontinued players took some work. I couldn’t find one until I started searching Craigslist, where I was able to grab a “like new” M7500 for $80. 

Couldn’t wait to connect it to my 2017 LG E65 (which is Arc, not eArc), changed the Samsung audio setting to Bitstream DTS to DD recoding, popped in the recent Tenet 4K disc which is DTS HD MA and then sort of held my breath while I opened my Sonos app to check the Audio In… DD 5.1!!! And that’s the best I’ll do with my LG Arc set. 

I’ve read some negative commentary about picture quality on the M7500 and other Samsung players, but I thought it looked fine, even compared to my Oppo. Of course, the Oppo does perform better as you’d expect, so my next test is to connect the Samsung to the HDMI IN on the Oppo, and connect the Oppo to the LG. That should give the Samsung output the benefit of Oppo’s better video processing, but I’ll see how it looks on-screen… and whether running it this way messes with the audio. 

But for right now, I’m pretty happy with an easy, $80 fix that allows me to finally watch UHD and Blu-ray discs with DD 5.1 audio through my Arc surround system. 

 

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If you had a TV equipped with HDMI eARC, you can change the HDMI Audio Format setting on the Oppo 205 to LPCM and DTS-HD Master Audio or DTS:X-encoded discs would play as multichannel PCM audio out of the Arc.

"Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." - Rashi
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Thanks, GuitarSuperstar. Yes, eARC would be helpful, and I did give some thought to selling my 2017 LG set and buying a new LG with eARC… but I just couldn’t justify that level of expense to “fix” the DTS issue when viewing UHD and Blu-ray. I would have been more motivated if the major streaming services  were using DTS, but since they’ve settled on Atmos or 5.1, and the LG supports Atmos pass-through over ARC as DD+, I’m good for 85-90% of my viewing. (And yes, native Atmos over eARC would improve on the Atmos via DD+ that I’m getting, but not enough to replace a 3-year-old TV that cost almost $3K when new. 

I’m sure the TV set manufacturers are thrilled with these ever-changing standards that push new set purchases, but it would be great if standards for audio and video could remain the same for a while. I know that 8K is going to be the next big push--it has already started--but that’s a huge shrug for me, an “improved” video standard in search of a reason for people to want it, other than “more” (8K vs 4K) must be “better,” even though widespread availability of 8K content is years away, if ever, considering that we haven’t yet hit a tipping point with 4K content yet. 

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My final test of the new system was a success! Samsung M7500 HDMI Out is connected to HDMI In on my Oppo 205, which allows the output from the Samsung to benefit from the superior video processing in the Oppo. The Oppo HDMI Main Out connects to the LG 65 E7P, with the LG’s HDMI ARC connected to my Sonos Arc system. With this setup, I’m getting the best of both worlds for anyone watching blu-ray or 4K discs with a TV limited by having HDMI ARC but not eARC: the Samsung handles on-the-fly switching of DTS soundtracks to Dolby 5.1 that the Oppo can’t do, while the Oppo outputs picture quality that’s beyond the Samsung’s capability. 

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