Look at #15 in this thread, it mentions it like won’t be the same as MacOS: Passthrough audio is finally on the way to Apple TV, iPhone, and more - tvOS Discussions on AppleInsider Forums
it’s all guess work though at the moment.
i can’t imagine Disney being in any position to put Apple under any pressure about anything.
Apple are an infinitely bigger company than Disney.
Apple is a tech company, Disney is a theme park company (who dabbles in content in order to get people to visit their theme parks).
In what respect?
Are you saying Disney+ has no customers?
Are you saying Disney+ will abandon IMAX Enhanced if Apple doesn’t implement a working soluction? https://help.disneyplus.com/article/disneyplus-imax-enhanced
That Disney streaming isn’t important to Apple’s streaming box?
That Apple letting themselves competitively fall behind on IMAX Enhanced Audio while competitors from sony, and hisense can.
I know many of us are plex and jellyfin users and rolling a bunch of our own content. But to ignore the reality and say there aren’t MANY MANY MANY familes want DisneyStreaming and cross shopping streaming boxes, Apple is going to be under pressure to not look like the lesser option.
i’m saying if you think Disney is capable of applying any pressure on Apple to do anything would be misguided at best.
to counter your last paragraph, i would suggest that the vast majority simply don’t care as long as they can watch something on their TV. i see it all the time where AV enthusiasts assume that because they want everything perfect that everyone else does as well - it’s just not the case.
the vast majority are watching on their TV using the TVs built-in speakers, probably on a TV with the picutre preset set to VIVID.
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Yeah, but it’s the 8 bay antenna in the attic for OTA TV that makes us one of them there videophiles. 
Whelp, I hope all this is true, that it will not just be what they already do with OSX, and they actually responded to what many users have requested.
Really, if they add full passthrough so folks can stream their own stuff, the Apple TV 4K becomes the one box solution for most of the Home Theatre crowd. It is already almost there, minus this embarrassing omission.
Hi-Res Audio would also become available for most then (as dubious as an improvement Hi-Res audio is…)
They already do, which is why TrueHD and DTS-MA will play right now. It’s just that due to the current implementation from Apple the extra data for your height speakers in Atmos or DTS-X gets dropped.
The Apple TV supporting passthrough as we are speculating here would bypass that whole thing and your AV receiver or whatever device you’re using will handle the licensing and decoding of the audio instead and hopefully then get all the channels etc.
Here we go! Dolby Atmos 9.1.6 (and passthrough) support confirmed on tvOS 26.
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Is the speaker layout file come from tvOS 26 release? There was no explanation here. Not sure that anything is confirmed or proven.
The original X post is from Aaron Perris who is a MacRumors analyst and as per his bio, the post implies that he was able to find the layout file within the tvOS 26 beta.
Since 2021, Aaron has been digging through Apple’s firmware, backend and other apps to find out what’s new but not in the change logs. He is also a member of AppleDB, working on cataloging every Apple device and firmware.
There is nothing new here. There isn’t an API. There is an enum mentioned in the SDK that has the word passthrough in it. I listened to the X poster’s podcast today. Even he stated we don’t really know.
Also, Apple Insider claims it’s “confirmed.” However, there are no sources to back that up. Every other source is just restating Apple Insider. If Apple was close to delivering this, I would think there would be mention of this in one of the sessions. So far there hasn’t. I’m not trying to be negative. It’s just we have been here before. I will be happy to be wrong.
Just passing through DTS:X doesn’t solve the Disney+ issue. Disney+ uses a lossy version of DTS:X that almost no AVR supports. The Apple TV would have to transcode DTS:X Profile 2 to DTS:X Profile 1 then send that to your AVR.
This has literally now been confirmed by AppleInsider with Apple now.
We’ve confirmed with Apple that that by enabling the new passthrough audio when it’s available and supported by a streaming app, a high-quality audio stream could be left alone by the Apple TV. This allows for hardware after the Apple TV to process the audio, which could give a higher quality result to the listener.
But I feel you. When you’ve been waiting for something for too long and it finally happens, but it doesn’t seem real.
You may not need a decoding license, but other licenses and usage rules apply. If you allow/use the intellectual property of another company for profit, the owner of the IP is entitled to part of the profit. So once Apple puts in detection code to pick up a particular format, or advertise in an EDID that shows support for a particular format or even puts in documents support for a particular format, you have to adhere to the rules of the owner of the IP. This may require a licenses. In Dolby’s case it certainly does. In addition, Dolby will want to test for proper usage. Roku is being sued by Dolby right now for this sort of thing.
I think he means support for Dolby Atmos 9.1.6 under AirPlay.
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So many posts, so little actual information…
This article is from Dec 2024. Not sure why you’re dead set on the idea that there’s no passthrough coming in tvOS 26 despite all the evidence.
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That article has nothing to do with passthrough. That article explains what may be going on with 9.1.6 Atmos channels reported in your post. The explanation given earlier doesn’t sound correct, as 9.1.6 has been in the layout file since at least tvOS 13. The article is very relevant because it also documents changes to AirPlay regarding Atmos in iOS/tvOS 18. The important part of the article is where it states 9.1.6 Atmos support in AirPlay is upcoming.
As far as passthrough is concerned, I’m not at all against passthrough support. My problem is that people are convinced it’s in tvOS 26 despite there being almost no evidence. Everything I’ve seen is a repost or quote of the original Apple Insider article that just points to an enum in the SDK that happens to have the word “passthrough” in it. In addition, even with the evidence you provided from Sigmund, he said in his podcast today that he doesn’t know. I’m happy to be wrong here.
Even if passthrough is provided, and Sigmund said this as well, Apple still has to add support for the particular format being passed through. So, we may end up with passthrough for DD and DD+ just like on the Mac. I’m sure most people getting excited for passthrough won’t be very excited about that.
One can only hope.
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Everyone is quoting AppleInsider because they’re the one who confirmed it with Apple.
This is from Techradar:
AppleInsider has apparently checked in with Apple, and Apple has confirmed that yes, there will be passthrough in the tvOS upgrade. And that’s a big change for serious audio equipment.
If you still don’t want to believe passthrough is coming to tvOS 26 after reading this, I don’t know what else to say to you.
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