Dolby Digital Plus changes to PCM

[JaimeFdezCaro]

Hello Samsung Community,

I have a SAMSUNG UE55MU7005TXXC and a LG SJ9 (supporting DD+ and ATMOS and connected throught HDMI ARC).

My problem is related with Dolby Digital Plus, let me explain it on detail:

- I select an emision with Dolby Digital Plus (Netflix or similar)

- I configure DD+ on Audio Menu and everything is OK now.

Problem start when I jump to another emission not supporting DD+:

- My TV changes to PCM Audio (I consider that it should jump to DD, if available, because is better quality and was the main preference on the system before DD+)

- When I go back to a DD+ emission then PCM is maintainted, not changing again to DD+ as was configured before, so I need to go to Audio Menu to configure DD+ again.

This erratic behaivour makes DD+ very unpleasant to use.

One possible firmware fix/solution is to change the Audio Menu from Current Selection:

- PCM

- DD

- DD+

- DTS HD

- DTS NEO 2.5

TO:

- PCM

- DOLBY/BITSTREAM (Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos)

- DTS (HD, 2.5)

So if I select Dolby, the TV will choose automatically the best option available (DD or DD+) if emission and soundbar supports it.

[ToonTonic]

What I find most amusing is folks here expected a response from Samsung.

They literally don't care

As soon as a product is released they just move onto the next one offering the bare minimum in feedback to issues.

You might get a bit of a response if in relation to one of the Galaxy phones they release, the rest just forget it.

I hope you all managed to resolve your issues.

[Smt76]

Hi

Just bought 82" nu8000 and noticed that this issue is still relevant. I have to manually turn dd+ on everytime I change e.g ps4 back to netflix. Is there coming solution? Alternative is to leave it to pcm and let my soundbar do the encoding. I don't is this the same thing. I own sony ht-st 5000

[NDev]

I have the same Problem with an UE55MU8000 TV.
What if i get an Nvidia Sheild TV box and play my movies from there?
It would output audio stream through HDMI to Samsung TV, cause it does not have an own Audio output.

Will the problem still persist there, or will that resolve the problem?

I mean, if the player box will decide to play for example DD+ and output that, will the Samsung play it or somehow try  switching it back to PCM?

Or lets say... CAN the Samsung somehow switch it back to PCM in this scenario?  Like telling the box the send PCM stream instead of DD+ , or transcoding DD+ to PCM on the fly?

Im just asking, before im gonna buy that box as a player.

Regards, ND

[Smt76]

Hi

I turned ps4 audio to dolby digital. Now when I switch between e.g ps4, netflix etc. Samsung does remember the settings. When I'm watching netflix my soundbar sony ht-st5000 says either dd or dd+ depends on movie, if I switch to prime video/Jack Ryan my soundbar says dolby atmos. What Im trying to say that my tv doesn't drop to pcm anymore....

[vangeliis]

@NDev 

I own an Nvidia ShieldTV and NOT affiliated  with Nvdia. I'm very happy with my ShiledTV but my setup is slightly different than yours.

I have ShieldTV(HDMI)-->Onkyo A/V reciever(HDMI)-->Samsung TV. The ShieldTV is set to pass the audio (audio passthrough) to the reciever that does all the decoding.

I think in your case the Shield will decode the audio to uncompressed PCM and pass it onto the TV (the same way AppleTV does it) with no loss of audio quality. So you should have the TV audio set to PCM.

Hope this helps.

vangelis

[Smt76]

Hi...

I have to disagree with this thing. I have set my tv hdmi input audio format to bitstream. Digital output audio to dd+. My soundbar is connect to tv via hdmi arc. I watch build-in netflix, viaplay, hbo etc. My soundbar will show which audio Im getting...dd+, dolby atmos etc. It depends current streaming service Im using and movie or serie watching... 

[vangeliis]

@Smt76 

I'm afraid HDMI ARC does not support Dolby atmos. Unless you have a fancy new TV with eARC.

What am I missing?

[Smt76]

Hi...

Well that us good question. Im not sure either, but I trust what my sony says...Im not 100% sure is that sound true dolby atmos or something else. Here is thoughts about atmos via arc:

Firstly, a little background. HDMI Audio Return Channel (ARC) is based on the IEC 60958-1 specification, which is essentially the S/PDIF audio spec. There's two types of ARC in HDMI; Single Mode and Common Mode, but unfortunately we don't get informed as to which type any given product supports. 

Single Mode ARC uses a single wire in the HDMI link, with performance limited to around 3Mbps. This enables support for 2.0 LPCM and "lossy" compressed surround formats including Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1, but nothing more. Cable length is a huge factor with Single mode, with reliability typically getting flaky beyond about 7-8m in a passive HDMI cable. 

Common Mode ARC is superior, but less common (excusing the pun) in terms of deployment. It's still based on the same S/PDIF spec, but can theoretically support up to around 12Mbps. This is enough to carry 24-bit 192kHz 2-channel audio, or — to the point of this blog — a Dolby format called E-AC-3, which we know better as Dolby Digital Plus. This can also carry Metadata-enhanced Audio Transmission (MAT), being audio objects; aka Atmos.

So existing HDMI ARC can potentially support Dolby Atmos by maxing out the Common mode capability with an MAT stream. But there's a huge catch. Two, actually; 

1. Channel count & resolution — while E-AC-3 can support up to 15.1 channels of audio, it's well beyond the HDMI ARC spec. Even getting 7.1 channels to pass is a stretch, so even if the stream contains object metadata, it will lack the resolution and height speakers. 
2. System support — getting Atmos to work through HDMI ARC requires Common mode support in both the TV and AVR, and a high integrity link in-between. Even then, performance will be marginal.

[vangeliis]

Hi @Smt76 

That’s a great explanation. Always good to be reminded of these things. 

To the point: @NDev  if your TV does not support eARC then having a shieldTV —>TV—>soundbar won’t give you Dolby atmos or dts:x but will get high res surround sound. 

ShieldTV works best when hooked up to a home theatre system. 

[NDev]

I never asked about eARC and Atmos or DTS-X.

I dont have any media at the moment that contain it, and my soundbar is a 2.1 device connected via Toslink to my TV.

So i guess this is a very simple setup compared to expensive AVR setups and Atmos/DTS-X,..

The room is rather small and i think this 2.1 setup is fine for now.

Just the the Samsung TV's behaviour like always switching back audio format to PCM is annoying me.

Which sounds not good on my soundbar, compared to DD and so on.  Its fine to switch it to PCM if the source is like that, but then the TV should switch back again to DD or DTS afterwards, when playing media that contain it.

I somehow need to work around that cause its driving everyone nuts who is using this TV.