Issue with Dolby Digital from blu-ray player

[rawpowerocks]

I was wondering if anybody may be able to help me.

My setup is a Sony blu-ray player, which is connected to my Sony TV via hdmi. I also have a Sonos Beam soundbar connected to the TV via hdmi arc.

When I play a blu-ray disc movie which has DTS audio I get no audio through the Sonos Beam because it is not compatible with DTS. The Sonos Beam reports the audio in is DTS and it is not supported. That is exactly what I was expecting, so no surprises for me there.

This is what my issue/problem is....

The blu-ray player has audio settings. One of those settings is 'Dolby D Compatible Output' which I then turn on. This setting says it converts DTS audio to Dolby Digital for output. But even after turning this setting on my Sonos Beam still reports the audio in is DTS not Dolby Digital, which seems weird to me as it should report Dolby Digital. Am because its receiving DTS I still have no audio.

The only way I seem to get audio through the Sonos Beam is by putting the blu-ray player 'Digital Audio Output' setting to PCM rather than auto. Then I can actually hear the movie. But the Sonos Beam then reports that the audio in is Stereo 2.0.

Why can't I get Dolby Digital from my blu-ray player to the Sonos Beam? Any ideas to what my problem is? Am I missing a setting somewhere that I need to adjust? 

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated as its driving me nuts

[merseyswine]

Ah yes. And there was Four Feather Falls and Fireball XL5. The stuff my grandsons watch is all about people and robots kicking the crap out of each other. A little weed that could talk....that’s where it’s at.

er...what is TTOM?

[royabrown2]

@rawpowerocks @merseyswine @williamfsmith 

A couple of afterthoughts to what I posted above on the DTS/Dolby D issue;

Firstly that while I tested the effects of having MIX on, thus confirming that it worked as described, I never tried it with MIX off, to see if it then didn’t work, or what;

Secondly, that I had the additional step of not just concentrating on BluRay and soundbar settings, but of looking at the audio settings on the TV, where the options changed as I changed the BluRay settings, and making adjustments there also.

This was on a Samsung TV, but likely would apply to your Sony TV as well.

[royabrown2]

@merseyswine 

https://ukcomics.fandom.com/wiki/Tiny_Tots

If you wrote in, or sent a drawing, or did some other good thing, you were awarded the Tiny Tots Order of Merit, and were entitled to put the letters TTOM after your name.

I’m sure it helped with my university entrance interview....

[rawpowerocks]

Sorry only just got a chance to look at all this before I set off to work for the day.

I have tried the settings suggested by @royabrown2  but that did not work. From a quick play around it seems that if I set the Digital Audio Output to Auto on the blu-ray player, not matter what other combination of settings I use I get no audio from the Sonos. From what I can gather the only way to get any audio out of the Sonos the Digital Audio Output needs to be set to PCM?

So I have just started from scratch again. If I unplug the Sonos and have the blu-ray players setting to these

Digital Audio Output - PCM

DSD Output Mode - Off

BD Audio Mix Setting - Off

Digital Music Enhancer - Off

Dolby D Compatible Output - Off

Downmix - Surround

The audio coming out of the TV speaker's is fine. 

I then plug the Sonos back in to the HMDI arc. The TV speaker's automatically turn off and the audio then comes out of the Sonos. But the audio has changed. There is a pretty big drop in volume. If I turn up the volume of the Sonos so that the speaking audio level was the same as when it was the TV speakers only, then all the sound fx's are stuff are really loud. So I wonder if my issue is to do with the audio channels? I wonder if when switching over to the Sonos something is going on with the left, center & right channels. Its like im losing the center channel. So when I turn up the audio to compensate the left and right go up as well which is why the fx's are then really loud?

[royabrown2]

@rawpowerocks 

PCM will come over as two channels to the Sonos, and the Sonos may not expect to process this further, and indeed may not be able to process this further.

You should consult the manual for your Sonos to see if it can do anything cleverer with PCM than just treating it as a stereo signal, but I suspect it may not.

As I have mentioned above in an afterthought, when using the DTS to DD Option it may be necessary to go into the audio settings on the TV, to ensure that the TV knows it is being given DD to send on to the soundbar, and the audio output is set accordingly.

But I certainly got the DTS to DD conversion working, and on bitstream (Auto) not PCM.

[rawpowerocks]

@royabrown2  I just tried some other experiments.

I connected the Sonos to the TV via HDMI and then tried out a Optical cable and the results were the same. So this issue isnt with arc.   

I then unplugged the Sonos so it is completely out of the chain. So then I have the Sony blu-ray player connected to the Sony TV via HDMI. I also have my freeview box connected to the TV via HDMI. 

If I select the freeview box source and turn the freeview box to a channel that transmits with Dolby I can press the info button on the TV's remote and the TV display says it is receiving stereo Dolby Digital Plus audio from the freeview box. So the TV can receive Dolby via it's HDMI sockets just like the specs in the manual says. 

When I change over to the blu-ray players source and press info on the TV's remote it does not display the audio type it is receiving. 

I have the audio settings for the blu-ray source and the freeview source on the TV side of things setup exactly the same. So in theory while on the blu-ray source pressing the info button on the remote should display that the TV is receiving Dolby audio IF that were the case. 

So to me this all indicates that the route of this problem is at the blu-ray player side.

If I set the blu-ray players 'Digital Audio Output' to PCM the TV displays it is receiving stereo. 

If I set the blu-ray players 'Digital Audio Output' to Auto the TV displays no audio information.

Keeping that setting I plug the Sonos back in and the Sonos tells me it is receiving DTS which isnt compatible. 

If I turn the blu-ray players 'Dolby D Compatible Output' setting to on I get a message on the TV saying 'If the setting is changed, DTS audio is converted to Dolby Digital audio and output. Do you want to change the setting? I then press ok and turn it on. 

I then press play on the blu-ray player which now in theory should be outputting Dolby but the TV then wont display the audio information again. So I turn the Sonos back on and that again tells me it is receiving DTS.   

So this all seem to point the finger that my Sony blu-ray players are simply not outputting Dolby even when the 'Dolby D Compatible Output' setting is turned on. 

[royabrown2]

@rawpowerocks 

And if you turn Mix on, on the BluRay player, with all the other settings as you have them now, still the same?

[rawpowerocks]

Sorry @royabrown2 only just got a chance to to look at this again. 

Changing the Blu-ray players BD Audio Mix Setting to On doesn't seem to make any difference as far as I can tell.

I also just tried another experiment.

I disconnected the Blu-ray player so it is out of the chain. 

So my set up is then a freeview box connected to Sony TV via HDMI and Sonos Beam connected to Sony TV via HDMI arc. 

When I turn on to a freeview HD channel which transmits in Dolby Digital 5.1 there are no audio issues from the Sonos Beam and it sounds great. The Sonos Beam reports Dolby Digital 5.1.

I then connect the Blu-ray player back up to the Sony TV via HDMI arc.

This time I play a movie that has Dolby Digital 5.1 as its main audio (rather than DTS). The Sonos Beam reports Dolby Digital 5.1. But unlike the Dobly 5.1 freeview source I now have audio issues like I did previously with the DTS. The speech (which I would imagine is on the center channel) is very quite and the FX/music over power the speech. 

Then if I disconnect the Sonos Beam so that the audio is coming out of the TV's internal speakers only, the sound levels are fine. 

The TV audio settings are identical for both the blu-ray HDMI and freeview HDMI.

So this to me indicates that something is going wrong between the TV and the Sonos but only when using the blu-ray player as its source. The arc works fine for the audio with the freeview box yet something is going wrong with the audio from the blu-ray source. The audio from the Blu-ray player to the TV seems to be ok. The issue is when arc gets involved but only with the blu-ray player as arc is fine with the freeview box 

[merseyswine]

It seems to me that the designers of soundbars that only have 1 HDMI (and it's eARC) have assumed that all your devices will be connected to the TV's HDMI array and that the TV will have eARC. I was reading a professional review of one of the high-end Bose soundbars and that's what the reviewer concluded.

[rawpowerocks]

I just thought of another idea to check. I connected the Sonos to the TV via the optical port on the rather than the HDMI arc. I think it now sounds how it should when playing the movie with Dolby soundtrack and the speech is not getting over powered. So this does suggest that something is going wrong with the arc. The Sony blu-ray player is not playing nice with the Sonos via arc. I could just leave the Sonos plugged in via the optical and it all be resolved but the only problem with that is because its not connected via HDMI arc the TV volume controls no longer adjust the Sonos and you have top adjust the volume via the Sonos app only. Which is really anoying