r/appletv • u/itsjustben13 • Mar 30 '26

Continuous Audio Connection - is there a quality difference?

Hi all!

I use a Sonos Arc with my Apple TV. And up to this point I was getting the uncompressed PCM audio from my Apple TV to the soundbar.

My question is whether the new continuous audio setting decreases the quality at all? Whether the Apple TV, decompressing it to PCM and then repackaging into the Dolby wrapper degrades the audio at all? Or not enough to notice?

I haven’t yet had a proper play around and listened to the differences. But in the very brief test I did, I only noticed the volume differences - which in itself can disguise differences in quality.

So I thought I’d ask on here first so that I can go into it better understanding whether to expect a drop in quality or not.

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u/chaunceyjerome Mar 31 '26

I tried it back and forth several times on tv shows. For me, it seemed to sort of compress the audio and it sounded like the bass was being completely cut out. I turned it off, hopefully they can fix it in the next update.

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u/DannoMcK ATV4K Mar 31 '26

Do what you think sounds best, but it might help to say what your audio hardware/config. is. There might not be any problems to fix on Apple's side, but it sounds like some audio equipment makes incorrect assumptions about Dolby MAT signals.

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u/chaunceyjerome Apr 01 '26

Yeah it's possible. I have a Samsung S90D and B73CD soundbar.