Apple Joining the Atmos streaming game!

[harync]

Perhaps. But that doesn’t matter. Anyone following this issue here and elsewhere knows that many people - if not nearly all - are experiencing the issue with Atmos AND Dolby Audio. You appear to be the exception, not the rule

So when someone writes specifically about the Atmos bug - which implies he/she is also having the issue with Atmos tracks - why not, at the very least, qualify the answer as “your experience” rather than explicitly and definitively providing incorrect info?

Mr. Cond, IMachine, olgitnorm, as well as myself are only having the issue with "Dolby Audio" tracks. As IMachine suggests, I wonder if it is handshake issue with AVRs, or some combination of the settings in people's AVRs and ATVs.

I suggest we start sharing our AVR and ATV model numbers to see if we can pinpoint the problem.
Me: Pioneer VSX-LX503 and ATV 4K 64GB (2021).

 

[Sergio]

For me the problem lies just in the Dolby Audio playback. The Atmos tracks sound fine. ATV4K connected to a Sony STR-DN1080 AVR.

 

[Ephi82]

Marantz 8012, ATV 32, purchased 45 days ago.

Dolby Audio labeled tracks not playing in 5.1, fixed by restarting a song. Saw this with Pink and Pink Floyd recordings.

same Pink album, after a skipping around a couple of tracks, showing and playing in ATMOS after previously showing and playing 5.1. What? Very weird

with respect to ATMOS tracks, I think I have had a few tracks labeled ATMOS that don’t seem to always play that way . However, for the most part, ATMOS tracks play in ATMOS

overall love the Apple TV streaming surround/ATMOS experience.

As a person new to streaming, still figuring out how to find the music I seek, and manage virtual libraries and playlists.….

now if I can only figure out how to get APPLE music on my iPhone to play in surround through the Bang and Olufson system in my car!

 

[mrcond]

Yet again, it affects ATMOS material as well as Dolby Audio material. I don’t know why some folks continue to write that it only affects Dolby Audio material.

Because it has never impacted any Atmos listening in my experience. I will edit my post.

 

[mrcond]

Mr. Cond, IMachine, olgitnorm, as well as myself are only having the issue with "Dolby Audio" tracks. As IMachine suggests, I wonder if it is handshake issue with AVRs, or some combination of the settings in people's AVRs and ATVs.

I suggest we start sharing our AVR and ATV model numbers to see if we can pinpoint the problem.
Me: Pioneer VSX-LX503 and ATV 4K 64GB (2021).

Denon AVR-X3700H for me.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

tvOS 15.2 beta 1 is out and no big surprise the Dolby Audio/Atmos bug is still there. So if you want to stay on the release version, no reason to mess around with it.

Still hanging on to 14.7; but wondering if by not upgrading, are there other potential concerns in other areas of my ATV4K, like app performance/security?

I'm trying to have fun here, but they keep blowing crap in my face, can't see the road ahead...

 

[IMachine]

Perhaps. But that doesn’t matter. Anyone following this issue here and elsewhere knows that many people - if not nearly all - are experiencing the issue with Atmos AND Dolby Audio. You appear to be the exception, not the rule

So when someone writes specifically about the Atmos bug - which implies he/she is also having the issue with Atmos tracks - why not, at the very least, qualify the answer as “your experience” rather than explicitly and definitively providing incorrect info?

Aha anyone! I did‘n know that. Ok…I‘m not anyone

 

[Tornado Red]

There do seem to be different experiences for different systems for some reason. So my experience is Dolby Atmos and Dolby Audio are both broken on an ATV 4K second gen box with 15.0 or 15.1 software. Whenever I start a song in DA/DA it will (mostly) come from one speaker. As mentioned previously, after playing for a few seconds, hitting rewind to the start of the song fixes it. If I have a playlist of DA/DA songs, after the initial song fix, it'll play all of the songs fine without rewinding again. However, if I manually interfere by jumping songs or going to a stereo song, I have to repeat the rewind process on the next DA/DA song. C'mon Apple, this WAS working right and it's been over a month already, don't you have an Apple Genius sitting around that can fix it?

 

[olgitnorm]

Anthem avm70 plus original 4k 32mb Apple TV running TVOS 15.1.
Not had a problem with any Atmos tracks whether full album or single tracks but doesn’t like Dolby Audio 5.1 without needing the skip fix.

 

[harync]

There do seem to be different experiences for different systems for some reason. So my experience is Dolby Atmos and Dolby Audio are both broken on an ATV 4K second gen box with 15.0 or 15.1 software. Whenever I start a song in DA/DA it will (mostly) come from one speaker. As mentioned previously, after playing for a few seconds, hitting rewind to the start of the song fixes it. If I have a playlist of DA/DA songs, after the initial song fix, it'll play all of the songs fine without rewinding again. However, if I manually interfere by jumping songs or going to a stereo song, I have to repeat the rewind process on the next DA/DA song. C'mon Apple, this WAS working right and it's been over a month already, don't you have an Apple Genius sitting around that can fix it?

What AVR are you using to decode Atmos?

 

[EricKalet]

I have the issue with Dolby Audio only not Atmos here. Onkyo TX-RZ810 and ATV4k 15.2.

 

[EricKalet]

This goes against the grain. Selecting Tori Amos album from the Atmos new release list with actually only one song ATMOS. Now heading off to Tidal….

Full album here in Dolby Atmos...Apple Music

 

[Tornado Red]

What AVR are you using to decode Atmos?

An older Pioneer SC-61. It decodes Atmos as 7.1 pcm, and Dolby Audio as 5.1 pcm.

 

[perzon57]

Full album here in Dolby Atmos...Apple Music

Here too, sounds really good.

 

[olgitnorm]

For me the whole album

Listening to this now and agree with others it is excellent, original recording done at her new studio down here in Cornwall. Interesting article here for those interested:
https://www.soundonsound.com/people/mark-hawley-recording-tori-amos

 

[harync]

An older Pioneer SC-61. It decodes Atmos as 7.1 pcm, and Dolby Audio as 5.1 pcm.

So your AVR is just ignoring the Atmos metadeta or doing some interpolation? I wonder if there is a flag in the metadata of the Atmos tracks that allows proper playback on more recent Atmos AVRs that isn't present in the "Dolby Audio" tracks?

 

[salsdali]

So your AVR is just ignoring the Atmos metadeta or doing some interpolation? I wonder if there is a flag in the metadata of the Atmos tracks that allows proper playback on more recent Atmos AVRs that isn't present in the "Dolby Audio" tracks?

that's an interesting observation because I posted earlier that for my pioneer sc-67 I have to press a button on my remote to switch from legacy to something (I forget) and this changes the display on the front of my avr to show "atmos" instead of 7.1 and I posted that I no longer have to press that button for atmos music from my apple tv.

I speculated that apple must be including a metadata flag that my avr recognizes and essentially presses the button for me?

I bet apple made a mistake in the Dolby Audio metadata flag and that's why they haven't corrected it with the latest updates because they don't know the mistake exists.

this would explain why skipping to the beginning fixes the issue because the skip bypasses the initial incorrect flag??

 

[EricKalet]

that's an interesting observation because I posted earlier that for my pioneer sc-67 I have to press a button on my remote to switch from legacy to something (I forget) and this changes the display on the front of my avr to show "atmos" instead of 7.1 and I posted that I no longer have to press that button for atmos music from my apple tv.

I speculated that apple must be including a metadata flag that my avr recognizes and essentially presses the button for me?

I bet apple made a mistake in the Dolby Audio metadata flag and that's why they haven't corrected it with the latest updates because they don't know the mistake exists.

this would explain why skipping to the beginning fixes the issue because the skip bypasses the initial incorrect flag??

From Dolby's website:

"Since Dolby Atmos is NOT a codec and is carried as an extension to existing codecs, there's an "audio format specific" byte in each SAD that indicates whether a device supports Dolby Atmos. A source device that wants to send Atmos to a sink device can check for Dolby Atmos support in the SAD for each Dolby audio codec.

It's common for televisions to support stereo PCM, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus and it's common for AVRs and sound bars to additionally support Dolby TrueHD. When a source device connects to a sink device, it reads the E-EDID to see what codecs it supports before sending audio. In the case where the sink device doesn't support the source's audio codec, the source device will decode the audio and send stereo or 5.1 PCM audio."

 

[IMachine]

I have the feeling that we have to deal with a handshake problem

 

[EricKalet]

Here's a fun one!!

https://music.apple.com/us/album/video-killed-the-radio-star/1444090125?i=1444090128