Dolby Digital Plus with Atmos

[Vidd]

I have a soundbar that decodes Dolby Digital Plus (EAC3), but not Atmos. Of course the Dolby Digital Plus with Atmos stream still works because of the backwards compatibility.

My streaming service offers a Dolby Digital Plus Atmos at 768 kbps and a Dolby Digital Plus at 640 kbps.

Would the DDP Atmos 768 kbps stream be theoretically better quality than the standard DDP 640 kbps stream because of the higher bit rate? Or would the Atmos metadata use more than the extra 128 kbps, resulting in the standard DDP 640 kbps stream being better quality?

[syberdude]

I believe 768kbps is reserved for extra bitrate for the extra moving objects for Dolby Digital Plus with the extension to Atmos. Usually Dolby Digital Plus settles for 640kbps for most WEB-DL streams or even Blu-Ray most of the time. Either way the difference in sound would be negligible for you to notice the difference unless you take the streams and run them through some sort of program like Spek-X to verify the frequency graphs. I'd just pick either one that works and not worry much unless you have the ability to decode Dolby Digital Plus Atmos. Windows 10 and 11 have the ability to decode Dolby Digital Plus Atmos through Movies & TV app, Windows Media Player app, and even Potplayer if you use the System MFT decoder through EAC3 option. If you went this route on Windows 10/11 then it would decode Dolby Digital Plus with Atmos to PCM through your device for sound. The only downside of windows doing this is that they usually are using the RF signal which has DRC (dynamic range compression) which may not be desired by the end user.