A few months ago, the folks behind the Xbox Insider program teased the introduction of bitstream audio support coming to the console during Microsoft’s Creators Update event in October.
While the wheels of development can sometimes feel like their grinding at a snail’s pace, Xbox One Insiders can try out Bitstream audio pass through support by way of the latest preview build.
Over the weekend, the preview program issues a build update that was deceptively titled “miscellaneous fixes” but actually brought bitstream pass-through enabling features such as Dolby Atmos.
This is how you can turn it on:
- Make sure your console is plugged in via HDMI to an audio receiver which supports decoding of Blu-ray audio formats. Optical audio does not support pass-through.
- Enable “Let my receiver decode audio (beta)” under the “Disc & Blu-ray” settings page.a. If you do not see the button immediately try rebooting your console. It can take up to 24 hours for our changes to make it to your console without a reboot.
- Make sure you have the latest Blu-ray player by checking the “Updates” tab under “My Games & Apps”
- Insert your favorite DVD or Blu-ray disc
- Kick back and enjoy the highest quality audio from your movies and TV shows
We’ve created a quest called “Try Pass-through! – Unleash your inner audiophile with Blu-ray Bitstream Pass-through!” to collect your feedback on the feature.
Since this is a beta feature we do have a couple known issues that we’re still working on:
- Sometimes videos may play with no sound.a. Workaround:
i. Try preforming a rewind or skip back a chapter to re-lock the HDMI connection between your console and your audio device.
ii. If you’re still experiencing no audio during playback, try opening the Blu-ray movie controls and cycle through the available audio tracks using the speaker icon.
iii. If none of these steps work, please file a bug using the Xbox Insider Hub under the Blu-ray app or by completing the quest.
- A pop may be heard when transitioning between chapters or when performing a pause/rewind/fast-forward command.
Thank you for being a Preview member!
Being part of the Insider preview, the new feature is still a bit buggy and as mentioned above, may require some active tweaking by enthusiasts. For those interested, try hard resetting your Xbox One console to ‘turn on’ bitstream audio pass through.
