No surround sound in movies since tvOS 15

Question

Level 1

31 points

No surround sound in movies since tvOS 15

Hello,

since I updated my Apple TV 4K (5th gen.) from tvOS 14.7 to 15 I no longer have surround sound in movies.

The audio streams of the movies in my iTunes library that I watch via home sharing are Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) and have 6 to 8 channels.

Audio stream example

But I can only see 2 channels open in my AVR:

When I watch a movie with iTunes (v12.12.1.1) through a laptop connected to my AVR via HDMI the correct number of channels is opened.

The correct number of channels is also opened when I watch TV via a streaming app:

Please guys help me to fix this.

I cannot watch my movies since then, this is not really well ...

Best

Felix

Posted on Sep 24, 2021 2:17 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

FLX90 Author

Level 1

31 points

Nov 19, 2021 4:59 AM in response to FLX90

I bought a new device, fortunately with tvOS 14.4.

Blocked these URL to prevent update (https://decovar.dev/blog/2021/07/11/appletv-how-to-block-updates/):

mesu.apple.com
appldnld.apple.com
swscan.apple.com
xp.apple.com
gdmf.apple.com

Reply

Answer 2

FLX90 Author

Level 1

31 points

Sep 25, 2021 4:14 AM in response to Urquhart1244

Because of the loss of information during lossy to lossy and lossless to lossy transcoding.

With lossy to lossless and lossless to lossless I don't lose any information. So ALAC is the proper way.

Since ALAC officially supports up to 8 channels and Apple TV officially supports ALAC, this shouldn't be a problem.

Reply

Answer 3

acjolly

Level 1

8 points

Oct 4, 2021 8:22 AM in response to FLX90

My surround sound audio has gotten super wonky since the update, too. It plays but then will fade left or get very quiet then suddenly loud. When I watch on my TV's native apps I don't have this issue. Frustrating to say the least, as I never had this issue before the update.

Reply