[RPi] Is it possible to pass through Atmos on a Pi4 or Pi5?

    A yes/no question that I suspect is a no. Which would have been damn useful information years ago, and ought to make the Pi ineligible to legally claim to have HDMI ports, as if they cannot adhere to standards to pass through supported signals, they aren't really HDMI ports then.


    But if someone here dares to think the answer is a yes, be prepared to show proof, and include detailed instructions how proven results were achieved.

    Yes, Atmos and other HBR formats are supported on RPi4/5 hardware. You need to have Kodi in advanced/expert mode to see and enable AC3/E-AC3 pass-through as these are normally the transports for HBR audio formats. You also need a "certified" HDMI cable that can handle the higher bandwidth required. I'm also assuming the RPi connects directly to an AVR so that HDMI complexities like eARC support on inline TV devices aren't involved.

    NB: Aggressive/combative posts are not going to win you friends in this forum. If you want to rant, please go find some other forum to do it in. If you want actual help, use less pith and a friendlier tone, and focus on providing useful technical information about your setup, how you are testing something, and provide debug logs to support investigation.

    Has anyone given any thought to a better setup process than hostname and wifi? Like an actual user friendly navigateable setup process that asks questions, guides through the essential setup to configure things ideally to a setup? Or perhaps even a few basic options (what am I connected to? A - atmos receiver, b - 5.1/7.1 receiver, c - speaker bar, d - analog output - to at least give a chance of a functional default starting point?)? I mean, you don't even ask what time zone the person is in, which guarantees the majority of users are going to be faced with an incorrect time on the clock and have to hunt that down as a side mission while trying to setup their audio. I'm not trying to be ranty or combative here, but as someone that has devoted 20+ years to providing white glove service to ensure our tech is helping end users rather than contributing to their problems, I just find software that is designed to be hard to use as rather offensive. I provide all my infinite patience to my end users - I have none left for dev and support people that contribute to the tech problems of the day.

    Will poke around for that expert mode ac3-eac3 setting. I did enable a pass through option, and the output is set to hdmi and recognizes the receiver, and the cable should be good, but I don't recall if the pass through option I enabled referenced ac3, perhaps another option was hidden from me and I need to get into that expert mode.

    I do find it can be rather confusing as an end user to still have a channel number option in place when my goal is trying to set it to pass through - the channel options go from 2 to 7.1, none of which are applicable. I assume if I get the pass through set properly, that bypasses that option, but that option remaining in place is rather unclear. If it no longer applies because another setting like pass through exists, shouldn't it become grayed out or disabled? Or if it still applies in certain circumstances, shouldn't that be made clear somewhere on the screen? I like to understand what I'm doing, but I can't if the configurations are unclear and ambiguous.