Apple TV 4K Can Now Play Dolby TrueHD Atmos, but You Have to Build It Yourself
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- Pengembang independen di Reddit menemukan cara mengalirkan audio lossless Dolby TrueHD plus Atmos ke Apple TV 4K generasi ketiga.
- Metode ini mengubah audio TrueHD dan metadata posisi menjadi format APAC milik Apple, lalu memutarnya lewat tvOS 26.
- Proyek ini masih berupa eksperimen dan belum tersedia sebagai aplikasi siap pakai; pengguna harus merakit sendiri di Mac.
Owners of the third-generation Apple TV 4K who have long envied high-resolution Blu-ray soundtracks now have new hope. A developer using the pseudonym Agathorpt on Reddit managed to play Dolby TrueHD audio complete with Dolby Atmos effects through Apple's set-top box, though it required a series of far-from-simple technical tricks.
The Apple TV 4K natively supports only the Dolby Digital Plus codec, a compressed audio format commonly used by streaming services to save bandwidth. Dolby TrueHD—which offers lossless quality—is generally found on Blu-ray discs. This limitation makes sense given the Apple TV's position as a streaming device, but it has not dampened home theater fans' desire to enjoy studio-quality audio from their personal film collections.
Agathorpt's solution does not send the TrueHD signal directly. Instead, it decodes the audio and Atmos positional metadata separately, maps the 3D effects to a 9.1.6 speaker configuration, then converts them to the Apple Positional Audio Codec (APAC), Apple's proprietary format. The final result is played through tvOS 26. Although APAC is not a lossless format, the community considers the result highly satisfying.
The motivation behind the project is a desire to match the Native Player app, which supports TrueHD Atmos but is closed-source. According to Agathorpt, closing the implementation makes everyone dependent on that vendor for future fixes and support. "Other apps cannot reuse or improve that code, and the community cannot independently inspect how the audio is handled," he said, as quoted from Reddit.
"The spatial audio works very well for me. It sounds amazing in my setup," Agathorpt said.
Other Reddit users who tried similar software also reported satisfying results. However, replicating what Agathorpt did requires specific hardware and software: a Mac, Xcode, an Apple developer account to sign the app, and film files with TrueHD Atmos 48kHz audio. The Apple TV 4K must also run tvOS 26 or a newer version. The complete steps have been shared on Reddit.
Agathorpt stressed that he did not write all the software used. The project builds on the work of others, especially AetherEngine and the LibTrueHD object audio decoder developed by Superuser404notfound. He hopes the method can be adopted by the Nuvio media player and other tvOS apps, so that ordinary users do not have to build it themselves.
For the Indonesian market, this finding implies that Apple TV 4K users in the country—a number that keeps growing along with the popularity of streaming services—have an opportunity to enjoy cinema-class audio without switching to another device. However, because it is still experimental and requires technical expertise, mass adoption is likely only to happen if official app developers integrate it. Meanwhile, Apple has just announced the 2026 Apple TV 4K model at a higher price and without significant new audio-video features, so die-hard fans may not be entirely satisfied yet.
Going forward, the biggest challenge is pushing this open source solution into the tvOS app ecosystem officially. If successful, it is not impossible that the Apple TV 4K will become a more complete home entertainment hub, combining the convenience of streaming with lossless audio quality. Will Apple itself take the first step?
