Does anyone know if the PS5 tempest engine will play back directly on these receivers or is it only the 360 music off of Amazon Unlimited and the like?
Yes, I'm aware the PS5 supports conversion of Tempest gaming to Atmos now, but 360 supports 3 floor/lower speakers up front that Tempest uses and Atmos probably has mixed in with the L/C/R speakers.
The newer D&M AVRs can also play Sony 360 music off Amazon now because of MPEG-H support (Sony 360 is just Sony's name on open source MPEG-H from what I've read so ANYONE can add support with the MPEG-H name instead), but again no support for those lower front channels (center height may work, however). I've yet to read if Tempest gaming works in that mode either since everyone is apparently using Atmos instead anyway. It may be a PS5 firmware limitation if it doesn't work on one or both. Tempest may also be more than just straight MPEG-H too, even if it's based on it.
It's also kind of disappointing that the 7000ES doesn't have switching output to have the lower speakers for use with Sony 360 mode, but with the option of having 7.1.6 or 9.1.4 when in Atmos or DTS:X modes. D&M offer that on some units for Auro/Atmos speaker switching for different speakers when in those modes.
The lack of Auro-3D sucks too for those of us with substantial collections and/or who like the upmixer. With Auro pretty much giving the licensing away, the only reason Sony has for not including it is they want to push their niche mode instead of helping someone else. The consumer is the real loser, though.
The only way I could integrate the 7000 without losing anything would be to use my Marantz 7.1 inputs for overlapping speakers at ear level and my reverse polarity "Scatmos" overhead units (used to extract Tops to have Heights+Tops) for the height layer (use 2nd input) and the Sony itself for the new lower front channels and then select Sony for 360 modes and use the Marantz for Atmos/Auro-3D/DTS:X.
That technically should work, but I'm already using the 7.1 inputs to have a Lexicon DC-1 connected for Logic7, Panorama and THX Pro Logic modes (combined with Scatmos, that gives me up to 11-channel Lexicon modes for correlated sounds at ear level at the front wides and ss#2 locations and a switch let's me send the DC-1's surround output to my Auro Surround Height speakers (mounted where Dolby used to want surrounds, high on the side walls above my current lower sides) for old school 5.1 or Pro Logic decoding.
I run optical connections from my Nvidia Shield (via HDMI breakout box) and Zidoo player (directly) so I can pretty much play my entire movie collection over it as desired for THX Pro Logic (using the Atmos speakers as multiple speaker mono sound arrays), Logic7 or traditional 5.1 (via surround height). Panorama works wonders for stereo music as well as does Logic7.
