What are my options for 9.1.4 or 9.1.6 Atmos music and movie streaming? Are there any?

[WogewWabbit]

Hi Guys, this is my first post here. My apologies if this has been asked before, seems like a trivial question to me but I could not find an answer to this anywhere.
I've been using Apple TV and Apple Music successfully with 7.1.4 layout via both discrete channels and HDMI, but I can't get my macOS desktop Music and TV apps to stream more than 12 channels.
I can make my apps ignore the OS level speaker layouts by selecting the "Stereo" tab in "Configure Speakers" dialog of Audio Midi Setup. If I do this apps like GroundControl Sphere can use all the available outputs of my playback device. (The "Multichannel" tab enforces the selected layout, and there the maximum is 7.1.4).
But when I try to play back Dolby Atmos music or use the Apple TV app I am only getting activity on 12 channels, no matter what. Even if I configure Sphere as 9.1.6.

So I have a couple of questions:

• Does Apple make full 9.1.6 streams available and play them back with the MacOS Apps?
• How about HDMI Passthrough? If I connect a 9.1.6 capable AV receiver or processor, will I get 16 channels from Apple Music or Apple TV servers? Or still only 12 channels?
• How about using an Apple TV 4K device? Are those capable of 9.1.6?
• Are there any alternatives (playback applications, streaming services) that can play back 9.1.6 Atmos stream out ot the box, either via a 16 channel audio device, or via HDMI?

 

[HomerJAU]

I believe Atmos JOC (encoded as Dolby Digital Plus) for streaming is only 5.1.4 as it’s set to 768kbps. It’s possible to encode 9.1.6 in Dolby Digital Plus Atmos JOC but it needs a higher bitrate, above 1mbps, maybe the full 1664kbps.

 

[WogewWabbit]

Do you know of any streaming platform (music or film) that allows this?

 

[HomerJAU]

I don’t know of any, but Dolby recommends 768kbps to streaming. Higher bitrates for delivery on BD.

Amazon steams some Sony RA360 (MPEG-H 3D) at 1600kbps with 22.2 channels but you need a very recent AVR to decode and limited support on current players (recent Amazon Firesticks and Cubes are with Amazon Music app). The next Android 14 supports MPEG-H 3D in the operating system, so Android 14 based devices will probably play MPEG-H. I’m sure Android 14 will also do the new IAMF Spatial Audio decodes but no AVRs I know that play that, early days but.

 

[sjcorne]

DD+/JOC tracks (either as .mp4 or .ec3) can be decoded up to 9.1.6 using the Dolby Reference Player.

Also, I think @AYanguas has had success getting 9.1.6 out of an Apple TV 4K on his setup?

Apple Music on Mac (using the Loopback/Blackhole workaround) seems to be limited to 7.1.4.

 

[AYanguas]

I have Atmos 9.1.4 (with Wides), because my DENON 8500 has a maximum of 14 channels (13+LFE) to decode.

I get all 14 channels either from Apple Music (Apple TV 4K to AVR Denon 8500) or from Tidal (FireTV 4K or Apple TV 4K to AVR Denon 8500).

I've mentioned several times on this forum about my pleasure advantages of having Wides (9.1.4) for Atmos mixes that interestingly use Objects in Wide locations. For instance, “Keane – Hopes and Fears” album in Atmos, the beginning of first song has discrete piano sound only on Wides (panned a little to right) on the soft part. I get that discrete content on Wides (in addition to the SDE#21 BD), either from Tidal or Apple Music using FireTV 4K (only for Tidal) or Apple TV 4K (both Apple Music and Tidal) to the AVR Denon 8500.

I have tested reconfiguring the Denon 8500 to have 7.1.6 (max 14 channels) using the 4 Top Speakers from Atmos and Front Heights speakers from Auro-3D, to get the full ceiling 6 channels and it works, getting content for all of them. Not a canonical Atmos Heights locations (and I’m losing the Wides), but just to test.

So, I guess the maximum 16 channels (9.1.6) are available from Streaming Apple Music / Tidal when a 16 Channels Atmos decoder is used.

 

[WogewWabbit]

I have Atmos 9.1.4 (with Wides), because my DENON 8500 has a maximum of 14 channels (13+LFE) to decode.

That sounds great, so it means that at least from the server side the layout is possible. I find it weird that on MacOS they don't make this available, probably they want to keep the bandwidth usage at bay - I can't see any other reason why Apple would restrict it.

I only have an AVR-X3600H, which works perfectly at 7.1.4 if I connect my Google TV, my Nvidia Shield Pro or my Windows PC to it. Unfortunately my MacOS does not seem to recognise the receiver as Atmos capable, it turns on HDMI Passthrough Ok, but I can't seem to get past the 8 channel limit. I am thinking that it may be because I have an intel based Mac, and Apple may have disabled Atmos Passthrough for intel. Or maybe they did not enable it properly for legacy graphics cards. But it is still weird that I can turn on Passthrough, and it does actually turn on (I can see it in Audio Midi Setup, also in the logs), but it reports back that Atmos is not available. So on Mac I use a UAD Apollo system to output discrete channels, at least that works well with 7.1.4. But as I said above, no matter how I try I don't get more than 12 channels from the Apple apps. (Well, I think the Plex client on MacOS is also capable of using Passthrough, but that can't use it for Atmos either.
Since I don't think I'm going to buy a high end receiver anytime soon, it would be great if I could at least play back 9.1.6 with my Apollo using local files, but I don't know any player on Mac either that would use more than 8 channels.