How do I pass through the audio bitstream to my receiver

No, there is no option present or coming for what you want to do. People have asked for years to let the PCM passthrough the Apple TV so their receivers can decode it instead of the Apple TV. So far no acknowledgment or response from Apple at all.

From months of reading since I switched over to the latest AppleTV 4K, I have figured out that Apple has, for some reason, decided to have tvOS convert all the soundtracks to multichannel linear PCM. There is no sound quality loss converting from TrueHD/ATMOS or DTSHD-MA over to PCM, however, things like the LFE level balance, spacial audio from ATMOS, and other factors are not always translated.

The end effect is a less theatrical experience. This is a shame because otherwise, the ATV 4K does a fantastic job with its implementation of Dolby Vision and proper frame rate matching to the original source.

Please Apple, implement a simple Bitstream option for those who would like to get the full experience with their high end theater receivers! This should be an easy thing to implement. I've been doing it with other hardware for 10+ years and it is usually flawless. In fact, it reduces the processing overhead during playback.

I cannot see why Apple refuses to offer this option. If they did, the Apple TV 4k might be the top choice among home theater enthusiasts instead of other clunkier products like the Nvidia Shield.

Realize that these forums are user-to-user, not Apple Support. We are just users like yourself and Apple does not monitor these forums except for administrative purposes. Please submit official feedback directly to Apple requesting the feature. With more requests from users the possibility of Apple making a change increases.

Feedback - Apple TV - Apple

@Ikrupp,

Yes, I understand that. I did submit the feature request through the feedback as well.

Hopefully, by bringing this issue back in focus, some of the other people who read this and agree it is a needed function will also submit a feature request for Bitstreaming.

For those that do request the feature, use the correct terminology. We want raw bitstreaming from the original source, not decoding. We want tvOS to send the raw bitstream instead of converting it to multichannel linear PCM. Converting to LPCM uses greater bandwitdth on the HDMI cable and adds unneeded processing to the Apple TV 4k. As others have pointed out, it often doesn't sound as good as what the receiver would decode from the bitstream.

I did too.