Issue with Dolby Digital from blu-ray player

[rawpowerocks]

I was wondering if anybody may be able to help me.

My setup is a Sony blu-ray player, which is connected to my Sony TV via hdmi. I also have a Sonos Beam soundbar connected to the TV via hdmi arc.

When I play a blu-ray disc movie which has DTS audio I get no audio through the Sonos Beam because it is not compatible with DTS. The Sonos Beam reports the audio in is DTS and it is not supported. That is exactly what I was expecting, so no surprises for me there.

This is what my issue/problem is....

The blu-ray player has audio settings. One of those settings is 'Dolby D Compatible Output' which I then turn on. This setting says it converts DTS audio to Dolby Digital for output. But even after turning this setting on my Sonos Beam still reports the audio in is DTS not Dolby Digital, which seems weird to me as it should report Dolby Digital. Am because its receiving DTS I still have no audio.

The only way I seem to get audio through the Sonos Beam is by putting the blu-ray player 'Digital Audio Output' setting to PCM rather than auto. Then I can actually hear the movie. But the Sonos Beam then reports that the audio in is Stereo 2.0.

Why can't I get Dolby Digital from my blu-ray player to the Sonos Beam? Any ideas to what my problem is? Am I missing a setting somewhere that I need to adjust? 

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated as its driving me nuts

[royabrown2]

@dimchris85 

I think I might have solved this.

The manual says:-

[Dolby D Compatible Output] [On]: Converts DTS audio source to Dolby Digital audio by using EDID (Extended Display Identification Data).

I think the manual means:-

[Dolby D Compatible Output] [On]: When handling a DTS audio source, uses EDID (Extended Display Identification Data) to determine whether the Sink device can support DTS audio sources or not, and converts the DTS audio source to Dolby Digital audio if not.

That would explain why the word ‘Compatible’ is there, and also why we are getting different results.

Whenever two HDMI devices, and, it would seem, two optical devices, handshake, the EDID data they interchange tells each device what the other can and can’t do, so they negotiate the best interchange they can.

So why doesn’t @rawpowerocks device avoid DTS, which the Sonos can’t do? Because the Sink device there is the TV the BluRay player is plugged into, which probably can do DTS, and says so. But then has no smarts of its own to do a conversion to DD before passing the signal on to the Sonos.

Once there’s a chain, the chance of the EDID information being correct all the way along it is low; and trying to sort this out across the devices would be a pretty complicated task, if it had to be automatic.

Hence my Samsung TV offering the manual options for PCM/Bitstream and DTS/Dolby; I choose according to what I know the soundbar can and can’t do, this then changes the EDID information the TV offers to the BluRay player to say the TV can’t accept DTS, so the Dolby compatibility kicks in.

Is there anything in all the observations above in the thread that this doesn’t explain?

A prediction it makes is that if the Optical signal from @rawpowerocks BluRay player were to be fed straight to the Sonos, then DD would be used instead of DTS, with this setting on.

But unless the Sonos accepts coaxial Optical, even a coaxial to optical converter, such as the one you have, @dimchris85 , might stick its own EDID handshake into the middle there, and muddy the waters.

[dimchris85]

My TV (Bravia Sony) does not support dts only dd (according to the manual). 

Like the player I have not selected PCM but auto -- I do not have the option to select dd explicitly.

From hdmi I get PCM but coax DD at the same time.

When I watch netflix though I get DD from both outputs.

Now coax is supposed to be connected to amps receivers.

I am not an expert on the topic but from my investigation there is no handshake procedure from coax.

From the description of the setting I understand that I expect to always get DD.

Further more when u set the option to true there is a warning message that makes it very clear that this is the case -- it warns u that the output will always be DD and u have to accept this to continue.

I am pretty sure that this is a firmware bug.

I have ordered an EDID emulator from Amazon I will update with my findings once I get it.

According to the commends on this product many people solved this problem by using this emulator hope this works also for me.