Hi guys,
Im looking at buying the new Sonos Beam. I understand it doest support audio codecs like TrueHD audio and DTSX.
Question is, will a Dolby Vision movie fallback to HDR if I transcode audio to something the soundbar can play.
My NVIDIA SHIELD play Dolby Vision movie fine with my current soundbar that supports lots of codecs. But curious if I transcode audio to a format that Sonos can play that it will break the Dolby Vision video side of things.
Thanks in advance.
Sonos: Supported home theater audio formats
Sonos: Software update with dts support
The Verge: Sonos finally adds DTS audio support to its home theater lineup
The Sonos Beam supports TrueHD if it is connected to your TV via HDMI-eARC. Your TV must also support HDMI-eARC and support passthrough for TrueHD audio from attached devices (not all TVs pass all audio formats).
The Verge article mentions that Sonos is supporting only the dts 5.1 core audio, not dts-HD MA or dts:X. The Reddit thread linked in the article might have additional details.
In the Plex app on the Shield, change passthrough = optical. This forces the Plex app to behave as if it had an optical audio connection, even if it is connected via HDMI.
Play a DV movie with TrueHD audio. It should be transcoded by the Plex Media Server to a supported format such as AC3. You can verify the transcode via Plex Dashboard → Now Playing.
That will let you know how Dolby Vision + transcoded audio behaves.
Thanks for the detailed response 
I’m more curious if people can give a yes or no answer to the ability of Dolby Vision movies still retaining DV video of audio is transcoded. For example if I play a Dolby digital Plus, DV movie and it gets transcoded to standard DD 5.1 due to Sonos not supporting DD Plus, will the video aspect of DV continue to play or will it fallback to HDR.
I can’t give an 100% guarantee but testing it out via my Soundbar and also setting my TV sound to optical (that I don’t have connected) it seems that Dolby Vision plays fine.
Thanks @Xhaka
What soundbar do you have there ?
I was pointing out that you can test it yourself with your current equipment.
It is irrelevant whether you have a Sonos, Sony, or whatever soundbar.
All you have to do is force an audio transcode on your server.
The audio will be transcoded and recombined with the video by the Plex Media Server, then streamed to the Shield. The same as if you had a Sonos.
If DV or HDR info is lost, that is where it will happen.
The soundbar is not involved in the process.
LG tv and Samsung Soundbar.
But no combination of these including those that aren’t even connected caused losing DV.
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