Is this an issue or normal regarding sound

[judgey 13]

Hey, I'm on shield pro and  just got a new sound bar with Atmos, so been looking at stats for nerds and I noticed this in the pictures below. It says software decode on one and on the other direct. The one that's decoding is the Atmos while the other is Dolby+. Why and what difference would it make, would I loose sound quality when it's decoding or will it not matter?

 

thank you

[ebr 16184]

Hi.  "Atmos" is not an actual audio format.  It is a layer on top of one and it can be on top of either DD+ or TrueHD.  Your system supports DD+ but not TrueHD - therefore we are decoding it in the app.

[judgey 13]

Hey thanks for the feedback, I'm not very technical with anything like this. Sorry if a silly question but am I losing out any quality should I get a better device to play on ?

 

Thanks loads 

[Luke 42078]

Hi, no, you are not losing any quality. To pass TrueHD direct you'd need an audio system that supports that.

[rbjtech 5284]

You are losing both quality and Atmos if you are decoding to Dolby Digital.

The only way to retain Atmos if using a sound bar that does not support True-HD Atmos (and eARC) is to use Dolby Digital Plus - which is what the 2nd example is using.

Given the bitrate of the first example (67Mbit/sec), I assume this is a UHD Rip - and thus the expectation is you have the proper equipment to play it - it therefore is unlikely to have a Dolby Digital Plus (DD+) soundtrack.  If it has a native Dolby Digital (non Plus) Soundtrack (could be labelled as AC3) - then that is preferable (quality wise) to letting emby decode the True-HD.

Audio Codecs are a minefield - and we haven't even touched on DTS yet ...  

[ebr 16184]

16 hours ago, judgey said:

Hey thanks for the feedback, I'm not very technical with anything like this

No worries.  The marketing of "Atmos" to the general public is really horrible right now because all manufacturers slap a "Supports Atmos!" label on their materials but neglect to tell you that it only really supports Atmos with Dolby Digital Plus.

This doesn't cause a problem for most of the mass public because the only media that has TrueHD+Atmos are physical discs and the vast majority of people are not using those anymore.  Instead they are streaming from services and they all use Atmos+DD+.

[judgey 13]

Thanks for everyone's feedback its appreciated.

 

Just one last thing you see the link below has specs on my Bose soundbar that says true hd support so would it be my NVidia shield that would need to be replaced not the soundbar ? 

soundbar specs

 

Thanks loads just i paid a shit load of money for the soundbar

 

Edited December 20, 2021 by judgey

[ebr 16184]

1 hour ago, judgey said:

so would it be my NVidia shield that would need to be replaced

Definitely not the Shield at fault.

Did you hook the Shield directly to the soundbar and then the soundbar to the TV?  If you are, instead, going through the TV, that is probably the problem as the TV probably cannot pass thru the TrueHD.

[judgey 13]

Hey, so its only got one hdmi port so it has to go through the tv unfortunately, tv is meant to be atmos tho and in arc port so not sure but like i say im clueless with all this.

[ebr 16184]

45 minutes ago, judgey said:

tv is meant to be atmos tho

Again - the manufacturer is advertising "Atmos" support but that is only with it in DD+. 

[judgey 13]

understood thanks for all the feedback