‘Dolby only allows its own audio signals to be processed by Dolby Surround up mixer’

According to the website Audioholics, Dolby Labs plans to impose a restriction on upmixing Dolby signals. Soundbars and receivers that support Dolby Atmos will eventually only be able to process Dolby audio signals with the Dolby Surround up mixer.

An Audioholics employee reports that he has obtained a copy of a new Dolby Labs policy change, which has been sent to all licensing partners. Under the new conditions, a Dolby audio signal may no longer be processed by a third-party upmixer, such as Neural:X from DTS or the Auro-3D company, which is popular in Europe.

In concrete terms, this means that an audio device can only process any Dolby signal, for example Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby TrueHD or Dolby Atmos, with the Dolby Surround upmixer. This upmixer is part of the Dolby Atmos format.

It is unclear what this means for, for example, soundbars that only have a DTS license and lack a Dolby license. These soundbars may then no longer be able to process an incoming Dolby audio signal. It is also unclear whether it is still possible to use a Blu-ray film with, for example, a DTS-HD Master Audio track on a Dolby Atmos speaker system via the Dolby Surround up mixer.

The Dolby, DTS and Auro-3D upmixers can upmix any audio signal to multi-channel audio or even to ‘3D audio’, object-based audio signals with height information, such as Dolby Atmos or DTX:S. For example, a two-channel stereo signal can be converted so that all speakers are used in a 5.1 or a 7.1.4 set-up.

Dolby reportedly plans to implement this restriction on all 2018 and 2019 releases of soundbars and receivers that support Dolby Atmos. The new restriction is likely to be implemented via a firmware update, but it is still unclear when this will happen.