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ADS20
Newbie

Spectrum TV on Roku - Strange Audio Formats

Firstly, I find the video quality with Spectrum TV on Roku to be superior to Spectrum’s cable boxes.  The Spectrum cable boxes produce compression artifacts and noise in the video, in my experience.

The audio side is where I have some questions.

When our new Roku Ultra’s audio is set Auto Passthrough, my AV processor indicates stereo PCM at 44.1 kHz for Spectrum TV.  This is a bit strange and I believe that the Spectrum server must be transcoding the audio to some type of stereo codec at 44.1 kHz. 

Auto Passthrough should mean that the Roku is passing the stream’s native audio format via HDMI. Correct?

With Spectrum on Roku, it seems like you can’t get the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound that is available for some content when using a cable box.  This is probably because the Spectrum sever only provides a stereo stream for Roku.

The really strange thing is that when the Roku Ultra is set to Auto Detect.  With this, the same Spectrum channel indicates Atmos on my processor. 

So, with Auto Detect, it seems like the Roku is transcoding the native Spectrum stereo audio to multichannel Atmos.

In the Roku audio settings, it clearly says that Auto Detect will “automatically convert incoming audio to best format supported by your equipment”.

How could this be possible and why would the Roku transcode stereo to Atmos?

This is should not even be possible, as you can’t derive multichannel Atmos from a stereo signal.  This would be like the some type of fakey upmixing to create content in channels that don’t exist in the native format.

Am I missing something here?

2 REPLIES 2
Capttcb
Newbie

Re: Spectrum TV on Roku - Strange Audio Formats

I’m having a similar problem. I have the newest Roku with atmos. I pass everything through my denon x6700h av receiver in a 7.2.4 surround system. While watching tv through the spectrum app, I select Dolby atmos on my receiver and it shows all the speakers that should be playing but the sound coming out is only playing in two channel with the subs. 

semeyson
Newbie

Re: Spectrum TV on Roku - Strange Audio Formats

Just found this out. Returned the Google for Roku to get spectrum, and today I thought my receiver was broken. It's one think to not get Dolby, but another to show Dolby on receiver??? What a bummer. I think I'm gonna cancel Spectrum and just use YouTube TV. 

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