File Formats (Audio), USB Inputs and Dolby Atmos

[Blumine1818]

I have a Sony KD-55XF9005, the Sony HT-ZF9 Soundbar and Sony UBP-X800 4k Player.

1. Using Plex from my HP Laptop to the Sony TV, everything plays in LPCM.

Is this correct?

2. Playing back from a USB stick into the TV, audio is also LPCM

Is this correct?

3. Playing the 4k disc of "The Matrix" on my Sony 4k player shows Dolby Audio on the soundbar and not Dolby Atmos when the correct audio is selected.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Kuschelmonschter]

Audio via passthrough is nothing but a pain on BRAVIA, also depending on the FW version...

1. Using Plex from my HP Laptop to the Sony TV, everything plays in LPCM.

Is this correct?

Not quite correct. Plex determines that the TV can perform passthrough for Dolby Digital. The server is also capable of transcoding other multi-channel audio formats (like DTS) to Dolby Digital for passthrough.

Sony's current Oreo firmware pretends to support DTS too but fails to output it. So playing videos with DTS track might fail. In such cases, audio passthrough has to be disabled (either on system or app level) which will give you stereo PCM.

2. Playing back from a USB stick into the TV, audio is also LPCM

Is this correct?

Same as above, also depending on the app to play files from USB.

3. Playing the 4k disc of "The Matrix" on my Sony 4k player shows Dolby Audio on the soundbar and not Dolby Atmos when the correct audio is selected.

Again depends on the player app. Kodi should be capable of outputting DD+ based Atmos. True HD based Atmos cannot be output via ARC. This requires eARC (which your TV doesn't support). So tell us which player you use and determine what kind of Atmos your movie has (e.g. with MediaInfo).

[Blumine1818]

Thank you for your detailed response.Most helpful!

The Matrix 4x disc was played on the Sony UBP X-800

Would this audio problem arise if I played mkv files directly from my laptop to the TV?

[Kuschelmonschter]

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The Matrix 4x disc was played on the Sony UBP X-800

Would this audio problem arise if I played mkv files directly from my laptop to the TV?

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Doesn't really matter. Depends on the wiring...

If you go from your external player (BD player laptop) directly to the TV and from TV to soundbar/AVR via HDMI-ARC, you are restricted to DTS, DD and DD+ based Atmos. So if you have a 4K and Atmos enabled AVR, connect your player to the AVR instead of the TV. It will use the HDMI forward channel instead of ARC for audio, allowing for lossless multi-channel audio (including TrueHD based Atmos).

[Blumine1818]

Thank you for this and apologies for the delay in replying.

My sound source is the Sony HT-ZF9 soundbar.

I have tried connecting the Sony UBP-X800 directly into the soundbar but it blocks all sound coming from the bar.

[Blumine1818]

Kuschelmonschter provided some excellent posts on this subject.

I assume that there is no way of getting Dolby Atmos on the HT-ZF9 soundbar from discs played on the UBP-X800.