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Cornflakesla

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 22, 2021
18
13
Hey everyone, I've been trying to research this issue and it's killing me because I can't seem to find others with the same problem.

I've seen a lot of people whose Apple Music stops after 15 seconds in Dolby Atmos mode. This is not it.

What's happening on my Mac OS (Monterey 12.2.1 on MBP M1 Max) is a Dolby song will play. The Dolby icon might flash on and off at the very beginning for a fraction of a second. Then the song would play in non-Dolby (no icon) mode. Then after a few seconds, often at the 15 second mark, but sometimes it can be as early as 3 seconds, it'll "switch over" to Dolby mode, and the Dolby icon will show up.

The issue with this is not only is the audio noticeably different between the two modes, which is very distracting, it also creates a slight skip or stutter when it switches over.

I have cleared the cache in Apple Music multiple times. In my Playback settings, I have lossless audio checked, with "Lossless ALAC up to 24-bit/48 kHz" for both Streaming and Download. Dolby Atmos is "Always On".

The skips happen in the same places in every song. Sometimes when I restart the Music app, the part where it skips might be at a different time. But subsequent playbacks it's always at the same time.

Any ideas on what might be happening? Anyone else having a similar issue?
 

biting-mammal

macrumors member
Aug 8, 2007
62
205
This exact issue is happening to me too. Happens consistently around the 15 second mark. Often the Dolby Atmos symbol will be present from the start, but it is still playing in stereo until the Dolby Atmos truly kicks in after 15 seconds. I read that it might have something to do with the wifi connection, as downloading the data for Dolby Atmos can be data intensive. I will try on cellular and downloading the tracks first and see whether it changes anything.
 
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