Ok I see that now, I wonder if it’s going to be allowed through all apps or just for certain things, but yeah it’s a good sign and hopefully leads to greater adoption.That is the link I shared - XBOX Series X is getting it. Apparently accessible for insiders already. Sounds promising.
Xbox Series X games could soon get an overdue audio upgrade — here’s how
Audio pass-through finally coming to Xbox Insider previewwww.tomsguide.com
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
New Apple TV - audio passthrough?
- Thread starter marcel500
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I'm a user of Shield TV Pro 2019, Sony X950G, and Samsung Q90r. In the beginning, I have no idea that how much audio pass-through will enhance the audio.
But after I tried to play the same video in and not in pass-through, I knew that I definitely underestimate the experience of pass-through.
And the difference is more than the audio quality itself, there are also things like the feeling of more accurate spaciousness, wider sound field. For example, if without pass-through, a sound of thunder might just be above the TV; but with pass-through, the sound would be full of the room, more like a real thunder happening. These kinds of differences are really easy to be noticed. So I agree with the word "terrible".
The better audio quality for HD contents is not limited to whether it's 32bit 192khz or not, but also how it performs a better surrounding sound. The reasons I need audio pass-through, are not limited to it can play lossless audio, the bigger part is that the audio technology like "Dolby Atmos" will have some special metadata to provide audio's spatial information, and the metadata will be lost if it decoded by the set then send LPCM to my soundbar.
And for most people, as you saying that they might not be able to tell the difference between pass-through or not, there's a probable cause that they just totally don't understand what better audio could be, like me before.
And though it's not that many people need pass-through now, customers still have the right to explain what we truly want. There's no critical that customers want a better device. And it's a good thing if more people could experience better audio quality.
Last edited:
Why do you think that?
Especially for music, decoding it internally to PCM and sending to HDMI (exactly what it does now, and ALAC support has been there for ages) is all that is needed.
What would pass-through possibly add?
You can’t get the full uncompressed Atmos through PCM, it has to be bitstreamed to the receiver for it to decode. The current AYV4k will do eAC3 Atmos which is compressed. It also has the capability of doing Dolby MAT 2.0 which keeps the object based info true Atmos requires and that can be done over PCM but they haven’t opened that up to all apps, so if I’m playing a rip through something like Infuse it can’t send the full uncompressed Atmos data that’s there.
Atmos metadata is lost during the conversion of a TrueHD Atmos or DTS:X stream to multichannel PCM. Firecore/Infuse can send uncompressed PCM to the Apple TV without Atmos/X metadata.
Audio Options (tvOS)
Overview Infuse for Apple TV supports up to 7.1 channels of 24-bit 48KHz audio in a wide variety of audio codec formats. Audio Output Settings Audio settings on the Apple TV can be adjusted through...
support.firecore.com
Last edited:
So it looks like Apple Music is a no brainer, curious to see what happened with Spotify. For Atmos we still don't know what will happen. I will receive my new Apple TV hopefully tomorrow and will install the GM, lets see what will happen.
My guess is we’ll have to wait until tvOS 15 either way, it seems unlikely to me that they’d add a separate option in settings just for this model when the others are capable.
I think Apple Music Hi-Res and Atmos Music will be two totally different offerings. And my guess is they will be using the tested DD+ Atmos stream.
Then again, I also do not see why would TrueHD Atmos not unfold into PCM and MAT2.0 just as well, as the DD+ does. It is raw PCM data anyway, the result will be just better from THD than it is from DD+.
They'd only need to add THD decoder to their Audio playback framework.
Then again, I also do not see why would TrueHD Atmos not unfold into PCM and MAT2.0 just as well, as the DD+ does. It is raw PCM data anyway, the result will be just better from THD than it is from DD+.
They'd only need to add THD decoder to their Audio playback framework.
The DD+ Atmos stream is decoded by the ATV to PCM and then re-encoded to add Atmos metadata to the PCM stream.
For Hi-Res music, Apple may be encoding the stream with Atmos before it is received by the ATV so the ATV passes the audio signal "as-is".
For Hi-Res music, Apple may be encoding the stream with Atmos before it is received by the ATV so the ATV passes the audio signal "as-is".
I have a 2017 Sony A1E OLED with a regular HDMI ARC port. In Nov of 2020 Sony released a firmware update for the TV that allowed compressed Atmos (used by streaming services such as Netflix & Prime) to be passed through via HDMI ARC. This has been great for my Sonos Arc soundbar. Previously you needed an eARC port equipped TV for this. Unfortunately, this only works with the built in Android TV apps. Apple TV 4K only allows downconversion to Dolby 5.1 for all audio output on non eARC TV's. Is there any chance that the new Apple TV 4K would allow this audio passthrough functionality for non eARC TV's?
Last edited:
I have an LG OLED from the same year that does not have eARC either but does pass the compressed Atmos for built in apps like yours via a firmware update. However I have my TV 4K hooked up to my receiver which can accept the compressed Atmos signal from my TV and then passes the video to my TV. I would suggest connecting the TV to your Atmos capable receiver or soundbar directly and then let the soundbar passthrough the video to the TV.
Thanks but this is a no go for me. I don't have a receiver. I have a Sonos system (Arc Soundbar, Sub, Surrounds). You cannot connect an Apple TV 4K to the soundbar directly without a dedicated splitter device such as an HD Fury which is an inelegant solution. I'm not sure if this is a hardware issue with the old Apple TV 4K and is resolved with the new model or if this is a software issue.
Last edited:
That is the key question will the problem be addressed by this new model or by TVOS15 or not at all.... I hope it will.
Why is that? There are also Atmos-capable soundbars around and you should be able to connect the aTV directly to it.
As I said in my earlier post I own a Sonos Arc Atmos soundbar. It has one HDMI output to connect to the HDMI (e)ARC port on a TV.
Doesn’t work on Infuse either, but I wasn’t expecting it too without a software upgrade. And yes these are TrueHD Atmos files, I have one with e-AC3 Atmos that plays correctly though
Wondering if I should install the BETA version of TVOS and test again.
EDIT: Just did TVOS 14.7, sadly no change. I guess we have to wait for TVOS15
Last edited:
Don't think the new Apple TV will support pass through even with a software upgrade. The Apple TV is all about streaming and there are no streaming services with TrueHD Atmos.
So after setting up my ATV last night, my Denon receiver only shows “DIRECT” on the front panel whereas with my X900H’s built in Android TV, the receiver would show whatever audio format was being output from the TV. Is there any way to determine what the ATV is outputting to the receiver when something is playing?
Unfortunately I think I’m going to have to return this new ATV. I was so excited to switch over to it but it seems Plex on ATV cannot currently play Dolby Vision files properly. It shows green/purple which is usually what you see when you are trying to play a DV file on a non-DV compatible TV. Also there is a 1-2 second black screen lag at the start of playback in Plex when “Match Dynamic Range” is turned on in the ATV settings.
If anyone can offer some tips on the aforementioned issues, that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Unfortunately I think I’m going to have to return this new ATV. I was so excited to switch over to it but it seems Plex on ATV cannot currently play Dolby Vision files properly. It shows green/purple which is usually what you see when you are trying to play a DV file on a non-DV compatible TV. Also there is a 1-2 second black screen lag at the start of playback in Plex when “Match Dynamic Range” is turned on in the ATV settings.
If anyone can offer some tips on the aforementioned issues, that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.