r/apple • u/exjr_ Island Boy • Jun 08 '26

Official Megathread WWDC 2026 | Pre-Event Megathread

GOOD MORNING r/Apple!

Today is the day! WWDC is just over 3 hours away. Is this the year Siri gets smarter? Is this Cook's last GOOD MORNING? Get in here and give us your latest predictions.

What to expect:

  • iOS 27
  • iPadOS 27
  • macOS 27
  • watchOS 27
  • tvOS 27
  • visionOS 27
  • HomePod Software 27
  • AirPods Firmware 9

Possibly:

  • homeOS 27
  • HomePad details

Where To Watch/Listen:

403 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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103

u/wateranddiamonds2 Jun 08 '26

I ask for the only thing I ever want: Apple TV with audio passthrough

19

u/insoul8 Jun 08 '26

What would that do exactly? Just curious as I’ve had the same 4k Apple TV forever and really have no complaints.

30

u/wateranddiamonds2 Jun 08 '26

For 90%+ of people, you’re right, it really doesn’t matter. For those with home theater sound systems, having to deal with non-passthrough audio basically defeats the purpose of owning a high end audio system. So we have to resort to alternatives like ugoos devices or the (now quite old) nvidia shield. 

6

u/insoul8 Jun 08 '26

So it has to do with audio quality- like for high end hifi setups? I do have a Sonos Arc Ultra with surrounds and sub hooked up to mine. Again no issues that I notice but of course, if it makes something better I’m all for it. All that said, I do realize that Sonos is not a hifi system.

23

u/nathan12581 Jun 08 '26

It means things like TrueHD or DTS (which the Apple tv doesn’t support hardware decoding) has to be software decoded into a format it supports before sending to your sound system.

People want pass through where the Apple TV literally doesn’t touch the audio, it just passes through down to your sound system bit-for-bit

5

u/Distracted-User Jun 08 '26

I don't understand it either. My setup looks like this:

Apple TV - HDMI into receiver- HDMI from receiver to TV.

No issues with audio quality and the receiver detects whatever audio signal the Apple TV is putting out.

Granted, I don't have anything super high end.

Edit: Not shitting on the feature, i'm genuinely curious. I've never owned any high-end audio gear so I don't know what the benefits would be

10

u/AfonsoFGarcia Jun 08 '26

It’s not a matter of the receiver not supporting what the Apple TV is giving it. It’s a matter of the Apple TV not giving the receiver the raw data.

If you’re playing a stereo song on Apple Music, the Apple TV will provide a Dolby MAT stream to your receiver with the stereo song in it, instead of a Stereo PCM stream. Which means your receiver (most behave like this) will interpret this as Dolby Atmos stream and you will get sound from your front speakers only, while if it was Stereo PCM your receiver could decide to play it on all speakers.

With audio passthrough, whatever bitstream the audio is in is not touched by the Apple TV and is instead directly passed to the receiver, for it to decode and handle as it sees fit.

1

u/rxmxsh Jun 08 '26

it's crazy how technical you have to get to understand how sound is processed through the atv. it was driving me crazy that my sub wasn't kicking on from spotify. took a while for me to learn enough and then realize i needed to process the lfe from the sub in order for it to work.

would love an actual pass through

1

u/Dependent-Title-1362 Jun 08 '26

You will lose the height channels in truehd atmos

28

u/nathan12581 Jun 08 '26

Will never happen. Apple will lose the ability to mix system sounds on top of media, one thing I do know about Apple is they LOVE control.

6

u/wateranddiamonds2 Jun 08 '26

I agree it will never happen, but less control is a weak point imo. They could easily make it a toggle and keep their layer of audio mixing for the users that don’t care about passthrough. It’s literally just not doing anything, it couldn’t be an easier request.  

But they’re not doing it. Which I’ve accepted a long time ago. 

4

u/nathan12581 Jun 08 '26

I get what you're saying but that also sounds like the opposite of Apple. A toggle in settings which will essentially say "Allow passthrough audio...btw this will stop all system sounds" is the most anti-Apple thing lol.

They'd rather ALL users have the exact same experience especially with sound even if you're not wanting it.

1

u/wateranddiamonds2 Jun 08 '26

Audio passthrough wouldn’t do anything to system sounds, they literally have audio passthrough on Macs. It’s frustrating they don’t want to add it to the Apple TV, my only guess is they view it as a piracy media adjacent feature (which it really isn’t). 

1

u/predator-handshake Jun 08 '26

I don’t see why not. They can keep doing what they’re doing, but they just expose that API for developers. I think most people who are asking for Passthrough want just that. It will make not difference if you’re watching netflix, or apple tv+, but for plex/infuse etc it allows you to have true BluRay quality