- For now you need to build the feature yourself on a Mac
- Native Player delivers similar audio but isn't open source
- Proposed as an extension to the Nuvio media player
As mentioned above, the audio takes a bit of a journey here. The path is:
TrueHD Atmos → decoded audio + timed object metadata → fixed 9.1.6 speaker render → APAC → native tvOS playback.
APAC is Apple's Positional Audio Codec, and while it's not truly lossless (the source audio, TrueHD, is a lossless format but APAC is not) the consensus is that the results here are really impressive.
The goal was to replicate the audio functionality of a closed-source app called Native Player with an open-source alternative because "keeping the implementation closed… leaves everyone dependent on that vendor for fixes and future support," Agathorpt says. "Other players can't reuse or improve that code, and the community can't independently inspect how it handles the audio."
"The spatial audio has been working amazingly well for me," Agathorpt says. "It sounds excellent on my setup." Other redditors have tried the same software and are reporting great results too.
There is hope from home theater enthusiasts that Agathorpt's project will be implemented in the Nuvio player for everyone and in other tvOS apps too, but for now you'll need to build it yourself. It doesn't seem too difficult to do, but if you're not the technical type you might want to wait for it to roll out as part of the app. It's been proposed for addition so hopefully that won't take too long.
Agathorpt is at pains to point out that they didn't write the software projects used in this process. It builds on the work of others, especially Superuser404notfound's work on the AetherEngine media engine and LibTrueHD object audio decoder.
Thinking of buying a new TV?
Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we'll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from image quality experts, and we'll recommend our three top TVs at that size for different prices.
