@gandja said:
Dxhelios’ point 2 above states that although the Plex app does not recognize the ATMOS stream, the app can direct play.
Unfortunately, that point is incorrect. The app can only direct play streams that the media player has api access to the decoder for. Dolby Atmos and TrueHD both fall under the category of passthrough streams that the current app cannot support.
yeah was about to back up jmckee here…neither dts master or true hd or atmos are playing…if you are getting a direct play it is playing the backing dolby digital track which xbox is then decoding to whatever bitstream or uncompressed you selected
Xbox does not play back atmos or any other high resolution track…the xbox app far predates the xbox one atmos support and the xbox one plex app is written in the old environment while the new environment is the same uwp code as windows 10 uwp apps
Basically nothing will change until plex puts out a new version
@mcrommert said:
yeah was about to back up jmckee here…neither dts master or true hd or atmos are playing…if you are getting a direct play it is playing the backing dolby digital track which xbox is then decoding to whatever bitstream or uncompressed you selectedXbox does not play back atmos or any other high resolution track…the xbox app far predates the xbox one atmos support and the xbox one plex app is written in the old environment while the new environment is the same uwp code as windows 10 uwp apps
Basically nothing will change until plex puts out a new version
Has anybody brought this to the attention of the powers that be at plex? I dont have a plex pass so can’t put in a bug/feature request that will draw appropriate attention - maybe someone here can assist in expediting a request to support the apps ability to pass-through ATMOS??
Such a shame because the Xbox One S can do it (somehow) as the Dolby Access App plays full ATMOS samples with ease.
@gandja said:
@mcrommert said:
yeah was about to back up jmckee here…neither dts master or true hd or atmos are playing…if you are getting a direct play it is playing the backing dolby digital track which xbox is then decoding to whatever bitstream or uncompressed you selectedXbox does not play back atmos or any other high resolution track…the xbox app far predates the xbox one atmos support and the xbox one plex app is written in the old environment while the new environment is the same uwp code as windows 10 uwp apps
Basically nothing will change until plex puts out a new version
Has anybody brought this to the attention of the powers that be at plex? I dont have a plex pass so can’t put in a bug/feature request that will draw appropriate attention - maybe someone here can assist in expediting a request to support the apps ability to pass-through ATMOS??
Such a shame because the Xbox One S can do it (somehow) as the Dolby Access App plays full ATMOS samples with ease.
They have said that an update for xbox plex is coming…they started testing with their beta app last year removing the normal windows store beta users…who knows why it hasn’t come out…perhaps it was to wait for this new ui (they did mention xbox one on the blog post)
If they come out with it and it doesn’t support atmos I think then may be the time to bring it up…until then…
@jmckee said:
@gandja said:
Dxhelios’ point 2 above states that although the Plex app does not recognize the ATMOS stream, the app can direct play.Unfortunately, that point is incorrect. The app can only direct play streams that the media player has api access to the decoder for. Dolby Atmos and TrueHD both fall under the category of passthrough streams that the current app cannot support.
Nope. Dolby Atmos is playable with PC app. TrueHD is not. Dolby Atmos in TrueHD = transcoding. Dolby Atmos in DD+ = direct play. Dolby Atmos in PCM = unknown/have not tested. To do the proper test you need to download Dolby samples. I am testing only with Dolby samples to minimize mistakes. TrueHD should be supported in Xbox One X, to what extent that is the question, but currently TrueHD is on spec sheet.
@gandja said:
So, could someone/anyone please help and advise on how I can get the plex app on my Xbox One S to direct play ATMOS.Thanks.
First of all download shattered sample from Dolby Atmos page, make MKV from it and try it. TrueHD will not work as
@jmckee mentioned many times “app can only direct play streams that the media player has api access to the decoder”. However Atmos itself will work.
@dxhelios said:
Nope. Dolby Atmos is playable with PC app. TrueHD is not. Dolby Atmos in TrueHD = transcoding. Dolby Atmos in DD+ = direct play.
I believe Dolby Atmos is only packaged in TrueHD. not in DD+. DD+ only goes up to 7.1 (Dolby Digital Plus - Dolby Professional).
@dxhelios said:
However Atmos itself will work.
I’m not understanding why you think Atmos works. The Xbox One app doesn’t recognize Atmos at all. Unless I’ve misunderstood @jmckee it just simply doesn’t work at this time until the devs update the app.
@gandja said:
Has anybody brought this to the attention of the powers that be at plex? I dont have a plex pass so can’t put in a bug/feature request that will draw appropriate attention - maybe someone here can assist in expediting a request to support the apps ability to pass-through ATMOS??
Yes, it has been been brought up. And even with it being brought up it’s not a simple fix. The app currently has no way to know if a user has pass-through enabled or not. This means that the app can’t dynamically in enable extra codecs that a users follow on device has access to. This creates a problem for the majority of users of the app who do not have a high end receiver hooked up to their Xbox One who will suddenly lose audio during playback and now have no idea why. But even with those issues aside, the current app has no way to access the framework to use the Atmos payback functionality. The current app requires a decoder for any codec being sent to the Xbox One, the Xbox one does not have a native Atmos decoder that the older non UWP apps can use, which means like mcrommert said the app needs to be updated to the newer framework before additional features such as this can be added.
@dxhelios said:
Nope. Dolby Atmos is playable with PC app. TrueHD is not. Dolby Atmos in TrueHD = transcoding. Dolby Atmos in DD+ = direct play. Dolby Atmos in PCM = unknown/have not tested. To do the proper test you need to download Dolby samples. I am testing only with Dolby samples to minimize mistakes. TrueHD should be supported in Xbox One X, to what extent that is the question, but currently TrueHD is on spec sheet.
The PC app is not comparable as they are two different platforms using two separate frameworks. Since the current incarnation of the Plex app isn’t a UWP app so it does not even have the same API access as UWP apps (on either the PC or Xbox). But to clarify TrueHD transcodes because no DTS/TrueHD decoder exists. Dolby Atmos in DD+ plays because the decoder see’s DD+ and knows it can play it. Then your follow on receiver see’s that the DD+ stream (that is being direct played because the app saw it was a DD+ stream) contains the extra spatial track and knows that it has the Atmos spatial encoding. It is completely beyond the detection range of the app because the app only cares if it can play the core audio in the track anything extra will be automatically handled (either ignored by decoders that can’t use it or implemented by those that can. It is very similar to AC3/eAC3. For the most part all eAC3 tracks should (but not always) contain the core audio AC3 track for backwards compatibility to older devices. Unfortunately, because media can be sourced from almost anywhere or created with any sort of options weird behavior can sometimes happen if the developers assume all HD audio contains the core track. Which is why DTS-MA/TrueHD will transcode if a device only supports the core audio format and not the full hd component.
Since the Xbox One DD+ decoder does not have anything for an Atmos spacial encoding it only pulls out the audio from the core channels. This is all done behind the scene because Plex can only feed the audio to the media player and it is handled at that level.
Now of course that could all change once the developers move to the UWP as staying outside of that framework does nothing but hamper future development. Or even as more features are moved into the api framework for the app to access.
@jmckee said:
Dolby Atmos in DD+ plays because the decoder see’s DD+ and knows it can play it.
I’m still not understanding how there’s a Dolby Atmos track in DD+ when Dolby says that’s not possible. But, guess it doesn’t matter cause we can’t get the Atmos out anyways. 
@mbarylski said:
@jmckee said:
Dolby Atmos in DD+ plays because the decoder see’s DD+ and knows it can play it.I’m still not understanding how there’s a Dolby Atmos track in DD+ when Dolby says that’s not possible. But, guess it doesn’t matter cause we can’t get the Atmos out anyways.
I don’t have the actual dolby spec’s but this from the wikipedia (Dolby Atmos - Wikipedia):
Because of limited bandwidth and lack of processing power, Atmos in home theaters is not rendered the same way as in cinemas. A spatially-coded substream is added to Dolby TrueHD or Dolby Digital Plus.
I personally have only seen it with TrueHD on my blurays, but I never underestimate what combinations you will find out in the wild now a days.
@mbarylski said:
@jmckee said:
Dolby Atmos in DD+ plays because the decoder see’s DD+ and knows it can play it.I’m still not understanding how there’s a Dolby Atmos track in DD+ when Dolby says that’s not possible. But, guess it doesn’t matter cause we can’t get the Atmos out anyways.
Here is the sample file d3rlna7iyyu8wu.cloudfront.net/audioexperience/shattered_5mb.mp4 provided by Dolby on audioexperience.dolby.com/ site. It is playable on Xbox and Plex App via Direct Play.
How can Dolby say it is not possible? Plex identifies audio as EAC3.
@jmckee said:
@mbarylski said:
@jmckee said:
Dolby Atmos in DD+ plays because the decoder see’s DD+ and knows it can play it.I’m still not understanding how there’s a Dolby Atmos track in DD+ when Dolby says that’s not possible. But, guess it doesn’t matter cause we can’t get the Atmos out anyways.
I don’t have the actual dolby spec’s but this from the wikipedia (Dolby Atmos - Wikipedia):
Because of limited bandwidth and lack of processing power, Atmos in home theaters is not rendered the same way as in cinemas. A spatially-coded substream is added to Dolby TrueHD or Dolby Digital Plus.I personally have only seen it with TrueHD on my blurays, but I never underestimate what combinations you will find out in the wild now a days.
I do not believe Wikipedia - there is a pdf documentation provided by Dolby and it talks about embedding Atmos/spatially-coded substream in various formats including DD+, PCM and TrueHD, but then I saw this demo site with samples. I have downloaded the sample and put it in plex library.
The page is here: dolby.com/us/en/technologies/home/dolby-atmos.html#2
The document how Atmos is encoded is here: dolby.com/us/en/technologies/dolby-atmos/dolby-atmos-compact-entertainment-systems.pdf
Details and reference to PCM, DD+ and TrueHD: dolby.com/us/en/technologies/dolby-atmos/dolby-atmos-for-the-home-theater.pdf
@jmckee said:
@dxhelios said:
Nope. Dolby Atmos is playable with PC app. TrueHD is not. Dolby Atmos in TrueHD = transcoding. Dolby Atmos in DD+ = direct play. Dolby Atmos in PCM = unknown/have not tested. To do the proper test you need to download Dolby samples. I am testing only with Dolby samples to minimize mistakes. TrueHD should be supported in Xbox One X, to what extent that is the question, but currently TrueHD is on spec sheet.Since the Xbox One DD+ decoder does not have anything for an Atmos spacial encoding it only pulls out the audio from the core channels. This is all done behind the scene because Plex can only feed the audio to the media player and it is handled at that level.
This thing I would like to clarify:
Are you saying than even having Dolby Access app does not help to render Atmos?
@dxhelios said:
@jmckee said:
@mbarylski said:
@jmckee said:
Dolby Atmos in DD+ plays because the decoder see’s DD+ and knows it can play it.I’m still not understanding how there’s a Dolby Atmos track in DD+ when Dolby says that’s not possible. But, guess it doesn’t matter cause we can’t get the Atmos out anyways.
I don’t have the actual dolby spec’s but this from the wikipedia (Dolby Atmos - Wikipedia):
Because of limited bandwidth and lack of processing power, Atmos in home theaters is not rendered the same way as in cinemas. A spatially-coded substream is added to Dolby TrueHD or Dolby Digital Plus.I personally have only seen it with TrueHD on my blurays, but I never underestimate what combinations you will find out in the wild now a days.
I do not believe Wikipedia - there is a pdf documentation provided by Dolby and it talks about embedding Atmos/spatially-coded substream in various formats including DD+, PCM and TrueHD, but then I saw this demo site with samples. I have downloaded the sample and put it in plex library.
The page is here: dolby.com/us/en/technologies/home/dolby-atmos.html#2
The document how Atmos is encoded is here: dolby.com/us/en/technologies/dolby-atmos/dolby-atmos-compact-entertainment-systems.pdf
Details and reference to PCM, DD+ and TrueHD: dolby.com/us/en/technologies/dolby-atmos/dolby-atmos-for-the-home-theater.pdf
@dxhelios @jmckee Thanks! Interesting info. Appreciate all the links with Atmos details. I guess Dolby just forgot to update their DD+ page (Dolby Digital Plus - Dolby Professional) with the Dolby Atmos info.
@dxhelios said:
I do not believe Wikipedia - there is a pdf documentation provided by Dolby and it talks about embedding Atmos/spatially-coded substream in various formats including DD+, PCM and TrueHD, but then I saw this demo site with samples.
That is exactly what the wikipedia page states is that
@dxhelios said:
This thing I would like to clarify:
- Xbox One DD+ decoder is provided by Xbox OS, right?
Yes.
- Xbox One has Dolby Access app which provides Dolby Atmos for Headphones and Dolby Atmos for Home Theater.
Yes. But the trick is accessing the Dolby Access app via the Plex app audio. If the Dolby Access app is simply upmixing all audio from the Xbox One S to Dolby Access there is no difference for the Plex app in switching the audio playback mode as it would all be done post Plex App/media player rendering. If the Dolby Access app is taking the audio stream output from the media player then that is another story. But the big problem is that the app is still on the old Xbox framework. So mingling with new features won’t be possible until that switch happens. (And as you have seen on windows UWP a switch to the UWP gives almost instant access to some nice new features)
- This app enables to render Dolby Atmos in apps and in games.
Games and the Media player are separate functions, for the most part games and Microsoft’s dlna player have more access to underlying features as they are a lot more controlled environments. 3rd party Apps will sometimes get artificial restrictions placed on them. This is another one of those cases that switching to UWP relieves a number of them as the framework is newer and has access to somethings that the older non-UWP apps did not.
- Plex then without any additional effort allows to Direct Play Atmos tracks, right?
This is simply a no. Every Atmos track I have ripped from a bluray has been TrueHD-Atmos and there is no TrueHD decoder available for 3rd party apps. This means that
Are you saying than even having Dolby Access app does not help to render Atmos?
It can and it can’t. Typically, the way the Xbox One work is the audio settings selected by the user are what the Xbox One outputs and not necessarily what it gets in. So with the Dolby access app it definitely helps render Atmos, but that doesn’t help the app any trying to directplay an Atmos app. Because if the Dolby Access app is rendering the Atmos spatial stream then that means the Atmos track wasn’t direct playing in the first place.
Long story short: What we need to get this working correctly (Without a stream being stripped down and then recreated/upmixed) is the Plex app to be updated to UWP and for a passthrough option that allows your receiver to handle the audio instead of the Xbox.
@jmckee said:
Games and the Media player are separate functions, for the most part games and Microsoft’s dlna player have more access to underlying features as they are a lot more controlled environments. 3rd party Apps will sometimes get artificial restrictions placed on them. This is another one of those cases that switching to UWP relieves a number of them as the framework is newer and has access to somethings that the older non-UWP apps did not.
Thanks a lot for extensive explanation. What I would like to do next is to test how audio is really handled right now. And I have found the way. There is a test tones files provided by Dolby. You can easily distinguish upper channels from normal channels. I have imported those to Audacity and… in Audacity you cannot distinguish upper channels. Positioning metadata is ignored or lost. In Movies and TV app on PC positioning is working. You can clearly distinguish the change. I will test it on Xbox and will get back with results.
@dxhelios said:
@jmckee said:
Games and the Media player are separate functions, for the most part games and Microsoft’s dlna player have more access to underlying features as they are a lot more controlled environments. 3rd party Apps will sometimes get artificial restrictions placed on them. This is another one of those cases that switching to UWP relieves a number of them as the framework is newer and has access to somethings that the older non-UWP apps did not.Thanks a lot for extensive explanation. What I would like to do next is to test how audio is really handled right now. And I have found the way. There is a test tones files provided by Dolby. You can easily distinguish upper channels from normal channels. I have imported those to Audacity and… in Audacity you cannot distinguish upper channels. Positioning metadata is ignored or lost. In Movies and TV app on PC positioning is working. You can clearly distinguish the change. I will test it on Xbox and will get back with results.
Hello, again,
So I used dolby test tones files (7.1.4) and I can tell that Dolby for Headphones works for Plex on Xbox audio. dolby.com/us/en/guide/test-tones.html
Test:
I can now make a conclusion that Plex is working with Dolby Atmos tracks in DD+ using Dolby Access app.
@dxhelios said:
@dxhelios said:
@jmckee said:
Games and the Media player are separate functions, for the most part games and Microsoft’s dlna player have more access to underlying features as they are a lot more controlled environments. 3rd party Apps will sometimes get artificial restrictions placed on them. This is another one of those cases that switching to UWP relieves a number of them as the framework is newer and has access to somethings that the older non-UWP apps did not.Thanks a lot for extensive explanation. What I would like to do next is to test how audio is really handled right now. And I have found the way. There is a test tones files provided by Dolby. You can easily distinguish upper channels from normal channels. I have imported those to Audacity and… in Audacity you cannot distinguish upper channels. Positioning metadata is ignored or lost. In Movies and TV app on PC positioning is working. You can clearly distinguish the change. I will test it on Xbox and will get back with results.
Hello, again,
So I used dolby test tones files (7.1.4) and I can tell that Dolby for Headphones works for Plex on Xbox audio. dolby.com/us/en/guide/test-tones.html
Test:
- Switch to stereo - disable spatial sound.
- Playback right front channel
- Playback right upper channel - result: no difference for right front
- Switch to Dolby for headphones
- Playback right front channel
- Playback right upper channel - result: you can hear that it slightly upper than right front, not much, but you can distinguish that. And it is totally different from right front or right upper in stereo.
I can now make a conclusion that Plex is working with Dolby Atmos tracks in DD+ using Dolby Access app.
So you mean there actually is dolby atmos sound, even it is not visible on the avr like it is when playing an atmos title on netflix or bluray?
@jason31 said:
@dxhelios said:
@dxhelios said:
@jmckee said:
Games and the Media player are separate functions, for the most part games and Microsoft’s dlna player have more access to underlying features as they are a lot more controlled environments. 3rd party Apps will sometimes get artificial restrictions placed on them. This is another one of those cases that switching to UWP relieves a number of them as the framework is newer and has access to somethings that the older non-UWP apps did not.Thanks a lot for extensive explanation. What I would like to do next is to test how audio is really handled right now. And I have found the way. There is a test tones files provided by Dolby. You can easily distinguish upper channels from normal channels. I have imported those to Audacity and… in Audacity you cannot distinguish upper channels. Positioning metadata is ignored or lost. In Movies and TV app on PC positioning is working. You can clearly distinguish the change. I will test it on Xbox and will get back with results.
Hello, again,
So I used dolby test tones files (7.1.4) and I can tell that Dolby for Headphones works for Plex on Xbox audio. dolby.com/us/en/guide/test-tones.html
Test:
- Switch to stereo - disable spatial sound.
- Playback right front channel
- Playback right upper channel - result: no difference for right front
- Switch to Dolby for headphones
- Playback right front channel
- Playback right upper channel - result: you can hear that it slightly upper than right front, not much, but you can distinguish that. And it is totally different from right front or right upper in stereo.
I can now make a conclusion that Plex is working with Dolby Atmos tracks in DD+ using Dolby Access app.
So you mean there actually is dolby atmos sound, even it is not visible on the avr like it is when playing an atmos title on netflix or bluray?
To be precise:
