Will Roon decode Atmos songs from Tidal and pass multichannel PCM over HDMI to my AVR? Will it just pass the Atmos data and let my AVR do the decoding?
Roon does not support Atmos decoding.
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Thanks for the reply. Is Roon able to pass through an Atmos signal without decoding?
It might but you would need to test, I haven’t seen anyone make a comment about it yet. I think that Roon can pass dolby dts through if it is lossless. Just make sure any and all DSP is off so you are passing everything lossless to the AVR.
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I don’t think ATMOS works currently. See also:
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FYI, I downloaded an Atmos track from electronic artist Matt Darey (mattdarey.com) in mp4, mt2s, and mkv, and played them on my Yamaha AVR with Kodi and VLC on my Nvidia Shield TV. The first problem became obvious - both media players saw these as video files, not as music files. I played the “video” files with both players with success. From Kodi, the Yamaha reported Atmos/DD+ for the mp4, and Atmos/DTHD (Dolby TruHD) for the mt2s and mkv files. VLC converted all to Multichannel PCM.
So, I guess if this format is to be played by Roon, it would need to work like Kodi. A straight bitstream might not be sufficient. When I tried to play the files directly on the Yamaha with source set to SERVER, the files were not recognized.
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Didn’t we try this multichannel audio thing before with DTS audio and SACD audio multichannel?
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Indeed. But now with Tidal streaming Atmos music, it would be good if it was supported by Roon.
I would bet that Atmos music streamed from Tidal is not in mp4/mkv/or mt2s formats. Have you tried streaming from Tidal?
You are correct. From audioholics.com:
Even when everything is working as intended, there are some limitations to Tidal’s Dolby Atmos Music experience. First of all, the audio is delivered via the lossy Dolby Digital Plus codec, rather than the lossless Dolby TrueHD codec used on Blu-ray discs, so there will be some loss of resolution compared to the studio master. This isn’t surprising — all streamable Dolby Atmos content that I’m aware of from services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video is delivered via Dolby Digital Plus…
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This is where buying or obtaining the bluray ablums is the go.
Pink floyd just did one, Pineapple thief also. Steven wilson has lots. All blu ray, all TrueHD Atmos.
Damn it sounds good on a proper home theater, but its so annoying to use.
I wish Roon could flick the track to an AVR as a bitstreamed audio track.
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