Questions about MrMC on appletv 4K.

[davilla]

Think of it this way, Your receiver has DAC's (digital to audio converters), they take digital (aka PMC) convert to analog audio and out it goes to speakers.

So MrMC decodes the HD audio into multi-channel PCM and tvOS sends this direct to receiver and receiver converts to digital. As long as MrMC decodes it right and tvOS does not touch it, it should sounds the same as if receiver decoded it via passthrough.

Passthrough means pass the audio packets through, MrMC does not touch them, tvOS does not touch them and the receiver then does the decode. For non-HD audio, tvOS can support passthrough. Not for HD Audio as it 1st required a sample rate of 192kHz and the max supported is 48kHz.

[Itzme1234]

This always confuses me too, but as someone who prefers my DTS over Dolby 5.1 I know PCM is what I want my AVR to display. Someone smarter than I need to explain it though.

[timstephens24]

Not sure what receivers/amps to with multi-channel PCM. Mine (Denon) does nothing to it. I have all 'effects' turned off.

I turn on Dolby Surround since it takes the input and put it where it’s supposed to be then extracts sound and places them in the additional speakers. It does nothing to the normal stream, just adds a pseudo-Atmos upmixing that sounds really good. They’ve come a long way from the last generation sound like Pro Logic.

[Ozkhan1]

Think of it this way, Your receiver has DAC's (digital to audio converters), they take digital (aka PMC) convert to analog audio and out it goes to speakers.

So MrMC decodes the HD audio into multi-channel PCM and tvOS sends this direct to receiver and receiver converts to digital. As long as MrMC decodes it right and tvOS does not touch it, it should sounds the same as if receiver decoded it via passthrough.

Passthrough means pass the audio packets through, MrMC does not touch them, tvOS does not touch them and the receiver then does the decode. For non-HD audio, tvOS can support passthrough. Not for HD Audio as it 1st required a sample rate of 192kHz and the max supported is 48kHz.

Ok. So what you are saying is that the decoding doesn’t happen at the device (atv) it just passes it to the receiver for decoding.

So there is really no difference between a device that supports bit streaming and appletv in regards to the end result because it’s just a matter of where decoding is taking place. And if you have a good receiver that handles all the formats, you will still get best quality audio even with Apple TV, so you won’t be compromising on audio quality.

Did I get it right?

[timstephens24]

So there is really no difference between a device that supports bit streaming and appletv in regards to the end result because it’s just a matter of where decoding is taking place. And if you have a good receiver that handles all the formats, you will still get best quality audio even with Apple TV, so you won’t be compromising on audio quality.

Did I get it right?

The only time this isn't true is when you have Atmos or DTS:X tracks. The metadata associated with that doesn't get passed, so they fall back to TrueHD/DTS-HD MA tracks.

[Ozkhan1]

So there is really no difference between a device that supports bit streaming and appletv in regards to the end result because it’s just a matter of where decoding is taking place. And if you have a good receiver that handles all the formats, you will still get best quality audio even with Apple TV, so you won’t be compromising on audio quality.

Did I get it right?

The only time this isn't true is when you have Atmos or DTS:X tracks. The metadata associated with that doesn't get passed, so they fall back to TrueHD/DTS-HD MA tracks.

But Apple says it supports Atmos, so is it a MrMC/Kodi limitation?

Heck getting True HD/DTS-HD through ATV ain’t bad at all. I’d be happy with some surround sound rather than no surround sound. For everything else ATV offers, I think it’s not a bad compromise!

[cosmoxl]

So there is really no difference between a device that supports bit streaming and appletv in regards to the end result because it’s just a matter of where decoding is taking place. And if you have a good receiver that handles all the formats, you will still get best quality audio even with Apple TV, so you won’t be compromising on audio quality.

Did I get it right?

The only time this isn't true is when you have Atmos or DTS:X tracks. The metadata associated with that doesn't get passed, so they fall back to TrueHD/DTS-HD MA tracks.

But Apple says it supports Atmos, so is it a MrMC/Kodi limitation?

Heck getting True HD/DTS-HD through ATV ain’t bad at all. I’d be happy with some surround sound rather than no surround sound. For everything else ATV offers, I think it’s not a bad compromise!

ATV4k doesn't yet support Atmos and when it does it'll probably only be a few special apps that use a DD+ stream to carry the Atmos info. I'd be really surprised if the MrMC fellas can get Atmos working as we currently can't even get DTS-HD or TrueHD passthrough.

[davilla]

Never doubt a wizard

[cosmoxl]

Never doubt a wizard

don't tease!!

[FranknStein7]

Not the only thing!
Don't forget Shield has Youtube in 4k and HDR.....

Why Apple doesn't implement it I don't know... but the VP9 codec is free so no need to pay google anything.

The Shield does youtube in 4k but does not support youtube HDR. For the latter it would need VP9 profile 2, which the shield does not support.