Dolby Atmos on MacOS

[Peeties]

Your are right i am using at this moment VLC on the shield but i am trying to get Kodi also working

 

[Peeties]

Yep the Nvidia Shield TV is a great device and has been around forever (2017). Unless I'm missing something it sounds like In Peeties case the mac isn't really involved at all other than acting as a network disk source for the Shield. He doesn't mention the player he's using on the Shield to actually play the Atmos files. I use Kodi on my Shield but there are a number of (Android TV based) players that can do this.

How do you used Kodi, over UPnP?

 

[Peeties]

Ok i have running Kodi; first make a nework storage with my Mac, used my inlog account. Then there must be a. Quite settings changed before i could find a mkb file from my Mac to play in Kodi eilth Folby Atmos. I was lucky to do this searching on internet with keywords audio passthrough, no video files setting Dolby audio on Nvidia Shiled and in Kodi; too much to give the links here

 

[Peeties]

And the interface of Kodi is more pleasant the VLC’ i have chapter support so you can go forward en backward to titles through the video; VLC only at a timeline

 

[Blackwood]

I’ve always been on the look-out for ways to play MKV files given the basic restrictions of a Mac to do full Atmos via HDMI.

While I have some solutions now, I was intrigued enough by the thought of the Shield doing it over the network that I bought one and set it up yesterday.

Still exploring, but some basic stuff worked. I started with VLC, but couldn’t find any place to choose what stream you want. Some of my ripped MKVs have an Atmos, 5.1 and Stereo channel.

Don’t know if it was the Shield or VLC, but I had some instances where the music slows down a bit, like the app or the Shield doesn’t have enough umph to play it.

Haven’t tried Kodi or Plex yet, but whichever lets me choose the stream in an MKV file will probably be my winner.

 

[Peeties]

In kodi you can easy choose the stream

 

[Blackwood]

For anyone who might stumble with the VLC channel switching like I did, it is there.

Once the MKV video is playing, use the remote to click down to see the playhead and Play/Pause button on the screen. On the bottom, left, there’s Subtitles/Closed Caption icon. Clicking on that brings up all the audio/video options.

Probably pretty obvious to most people. I guess I was still putting most of my mental energy on figuring out the reason behind the odd-shaped remote.

This is now my third different device to play surround MKVs through my AVR since it doesn’t happen with heights on a Mac.

What I like about the Shield is that it can handle a large USB external drive, larger than the Neumi that I was using. Plus, the Shield can connect over ethernet.

 

[pti]

Just so hard to believe that Mac's don't allow passthrough over hdmi. Is what it is I guess.

Mac passthrough is on the way:

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/07/03/macos-sequoia-supports-hdmi-passthrough/

 

[Blackwood]

I’m going to plant myself in the “cautiously optimistic” category for now.

The new functionality appears in various places in macOS 15, including Apple's TV, Music, and QuickTime Player apps.

But will it be allowed in 3rd party apps like VLC and not just Apple apps?

I’m normally hesitant to upgrade to a new OS if the current one is working fine for me. But this could push me to upgrade if the initial reports prove positive and if there isn’t some caveat we don’t know about yet.

Of course, this announcement comes just days after I buy the Nvidia Shield to handle my multichannel files... which came after buying a Neumi to handle my multichannel files... which came after buying a Trigkey micro computer to handle my multichannel files... which came after buying a Dell desktop to handle my multichannel files.

And I only went down this road initially because I was so impressed hearing Monkey House’s Remember the Audio that I just had to own it when IAA put it up for sale. Now I have a ton of bought or ripped multichannel files but have been disappointed (up to now) that Apple, which claims to love music, has made it a bit difficult to enjoy it to the fullest on their own devices.

It’s like Tim Cook said after all my workaround purchases, “OK... we’ve made the poor sap, and many more like him, suffer long enough. Go ahead and throw that switch for passthrough that we’ve been hiding in the OS all along.”

 

[jimfisheye]

VLC player minds the MacOS audio setting. If you do the "Atmos trick" with leaving the audio output device in default 'no selection', VLC Player gives a "no audio format set" alert and reverts to stereo output only. Bastards...
The handful of video + 12ch audio titles I have I play in a DAW app at present. Classy right?

It sounds like they may be relaxing the approved device requirement? I'll demo the new MacOS one of these days. They've done "amnesty" releases before where they backed off some hard line stuff. Monterey for video cards was like that. Have to see it to believe it though! I don't have any way to test passthrough. I'll always avoid HDMI connections for audio. I'll be looking to see if the Music app still blanks out the Atmos controls when no 'approved device' is connected. I don't play on buying any approved devices any time soon. Plenty of pro audio gear here.

 

[humprof]

Mac passthrough is on the way:

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/07/03/macos-sequoia-supports-hdmi-passthrough/

Hallelujah! Just downloaded the Sequoia beta, found and checked HDMI pass-through in the Dolby Atmos settings in Apple Music, and I'm listening to Wilco's new EP in glorious Atmos, streaming from my MacBook Pro to my AVR.

Don't know yet whether this will work with VLC, as there's no pass-through option in the MacOS General Settings>Audio section. But we'll see.

 

[Franck]

Just saw that Atmos via HDMI pass-through is coming to MacOS
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/07/03/macos-sequoia-supports-hdmi-passthrough/

 

[humprof]

Hallelujah! Just downloaded the Sequoia beta, found and checked HDMI pass-through in the Dolby Atmos settings in Apple Music, and I'm listening to Wilco's new EP in glorious Atmos, streaming from my MacBook Pro to my AVR.

Don't know yet whether this will work with VLC, as there's no pass-through option in the MacOS General Settings>Audio section. But we'll see.

Can't find a pass-through setting in VLC for Mac 3.0 yet, either. Or IINA 1.3.5. Looks like Atmos is limited to Apple Music (and TV) so far. Hopefully it's just a matter of waiting for the third-party developers to catch up, and not a limitation in Mac OS?

 

[Peeties]

So two important questions are remaining

Will it be lossless? And what with te third-party like VLC Kodi Plex or Infuse? We have still any weeks to know more!

 

[Peeties]

Hallelujah! Just downloaded the Sequoia beta, found and checked HDMI pass-through in the Dolby Atmos settings in Apple Music, and I'm listening to Wilco's new EP in glorious Atmos, streaming from my MacBook Pro to my AVR.

Don't know yet whether this will work with VLC, as there's no pass-through option in the MacOS General Settings>Audio section. But we'll see.

Can you check if quicktime can play passthrough lossless?

 

[humprof]

Can you check if quicktime can play passthrough lossless?

I'll try later today. Quicktime has certainly been listed as one of the Apple media apps to which passthrough has been added. (I didn't realize anyone even used it anymore!) But I'm not an experienced Mac user, so I'm not sure it will play hi-res Atmos.

The first problem is that Quicktime doesn't handle MKV natively. The choices seem to be to convert to .MOV (with, say, the "Perian" plug-in, although support for that plugin seems to have stopped, plus I've never heard of Atmos-encoded MOV) or to .MP4--and it's not clear to me whether MP4 can support higher-resolution/TrueHD Atmos, or only lower-res DD+JOC.

I suspect that eventually, third-party players like Elmedia, Movist, VLC, and IINA will build in a passthrough setting.

 

[leefarber]

Looking forward to seeing how this affects JRiver Media Center. I don't use Kodi, so I play my Atmos content by using Media Center to send the MKA files via DLNA to my Oppo 205, which then bitstreams to my Atmos enabled Pre/Pro. When doing this, I can't play gapless. But if I can go direct from Mac Mini to the Pre/Pro via HDMI passthrough unsing Media Center, it could be a game changer.

 

[Peeties]

I had contact today with Appleinsider

They wrote me this about the feature:

“Still doesn’t do anything!”

I have asked for more information