I purchased a HW-Q990D Soundbar and have it connected to an Nvidia Shield Pro via HDMI 2.1 cable. Soundbar then connects to the Samsung Q90 TV via the eArc port. The sound works fine for all the streaming apps including Dolby Digital Plus Atmos, however, I cannot seem to play lossless content (DTS:X, DTS-HD) through HW-Q990D Soundbar via the Shield Pro (using VLC app).
I have also tried:
a Macbook Pro M1 Max w/ VLC
a Playstation 5 with a Blu-ray with DTS:X / HD content.
Regular DTS audio works fine.
I have the latest firmware for the Soundbar as of this post (Version 1016) and also on the TV.
When I enable "passthrough" mode in VLC, it attempts to play the audio content and I do see either DTS:X or DTS-HD on the scrolling mini-screen of the soundbar, however, there is no audio but occasionally there will be bleeps and other digitized noise while the content plays (I can see the video fine).
With "passthrough" mode disabled in VLC, the most I can hear is DTS and DolbyDigital Plus w/ Atmos.
The setup and config options work fine when connected to a Yamaha RX-A1080 receiver. The Yamaha correctly reports the DTS-X, DTS-HD, or TrueHD w/ Atmos status and plays the audio correctly from an Nvidia Shield Pro.
I tried swapping cables, tried different ports on HDMI1 / HDMI2 on the soundbar, tried non-eARC ports on the TV, different Shield & VLC settings, nothing fixes this issue.
After thinking the soundbar was defective, I took my Shield Pro into a store and connected it to another HW-Q990D on the showroom floor - EXACTLY THE SAME RESULTS! No audio from lossless content.
The only device we managed to get working in the store was a Panasonic DP-UB420PCK Blue-ray Disc player while playing DTS:X and DTS-HD demo content to the soundbar.
The marketing material and manual say this Soundbar is "Capable of Dolby Atmos / DTS:X decoding and playback".
The sound from the speakers on this unit is fantastic but I think it would sound amazing if I could get DTS:X, DTS-* working properly.
Anyone know what I'm missing? Can anyone else reproduce this issue? Is this a bug on the HW-Q990D sound bar?
If you use Kodi as the player you'll be able to get those audio codecs. You first have to enable the settings on Kodi for dts hd and dolby true hd under system-audio and enable audio passthrough.
If you use Kodi as the player you'll be able to get those audio codecs. You first have to enable the settings on Kodi for dts hd and dolby true hd under system-audio and enable audio passthrough.
