none of the advice in the article addressed this problem. I can play my apple music library in surround using other streaming devices, but none of my Apple TVs are able to do it. it must be something I am doing wrong, because this would be a huge oversight on the designers' part if this was a real hardware limitation.
As logical as your answer sounds, when I play the same songs from my apple playlist using MusicCast by Yamaha instead of Apple TV on the same hardware (ie through the same receiver, speakers, etc) the song is played in surround sound. it appears that AppleTV is unable to offer this same feature? I assume MusicCast converts it somehow to surround sound - and it sounds MUCH better. Is the answer that Apple TV is really not designed to play music on a higher quality sound system?
Music is 2 channel audio, you aren't getting surround sound from your other devices. Your receiver is likely to be able to take 2 channel audio and mimic surround sound and play it through all of its speakers (it's not surround sound). However, from what you are saying it appears that your receiver isn't doing this with the audio t receives from the Apple TV. This may be because the Apple TV is already sending multi-channel audio but with audio only on two of them.
Try changing settings > audio & video > surround sound
Sorry, I wrote my post in a rush. There are 3 options under surround sound. I have tried them all. I restarted the AppleTV after each change. None of the options fixed my issue. But as I have said, surround sound for movies worked great when I selected each of the two options that activate the surround sound.
Music is 2 channel audio only, you can't expect it to be surround sound. Your other devices don't play music with surround sound.
Hi Breeze1234. If your receiver is like mine, you can enable different sound processing modes for each input. Maybe you've enabled different processing for the other device?
HI Winston, it is already on surround sound - and when I use the same AppleTV to play a movie through the same receiver, the surround sound works great. So its not that.
There isn't an option that says 'surround sound' in the surround sound settings. Have you tried changing it from whatever it is now.
Have you looked at the settings on your receiver?
How come my surround sound works when I watch a movie, but not when I play Apple Music?
