Designed to pair a TV’s internal sound system with wireless speakers, Dolby promises to “unlock a more extensive and immersive Dolby Atmos sound experience”. The feature will also optimise the sound for the room layout and speaker setup, with Dolby taking advantage of the microphones already built into a TV to perform acoustic mapping to locate the wireless speakers in the room and calibrate the system.

John Couling, Senior Vice President, Entertainment, Dolby Laboratories, told StereoNET:

Consumers shouldn’t have to move their furniture to experience better audio, but rather audio should adapt to them. Dolby Atmos FlexConnect is an entirely new category of experience that offers consumers the freedom and flexibility to choose how they want to arrange their devices while still getting a great immersive Dolby Atmos experience.

TCL is the first brand to jump on board, offering FlexConnect with its upcoming 2024 TV lineup that will be showcased at IFA. The televisions will be powered by MediaTek’s Pentonic Smart TV series chipset, and TCL will also be launching a line of wireless speakers that are designed specially to complement the TVs with the FlexConnect feature. 

Frédéric Langin, Chief Commercial Officer, TCL Europe added:

With Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, users can unlock incredible immersive sound no matter how they arrange their audio devices. We can’t wait to introduce the world to this new tailored sound experience with our upcoming lineup of TVs and accessory wireless speakers.

If this sounds somewhat familiar, that’s because other companies like Samsung and Sony have done something similar as well. Samsung’s Q-Symphony feature uses the built-in speakers from select televisions and syncs the audio with certain Samsung soundbars, playing sound in sync to get an enhanced surround sound experience. 

Sony also offers something similar with their Center Speaker mode, S-Center mode and Acoustic Center Sync on selected BRAVIA TVs and Sony soundbars and speakers, using the TV’s built-in speakers as part of the centre channel for better speech quality. 

The difference here is that Dolby’s solution doesn’t require a soundbar to be connected to the TV through HDMI or an optical cable, which could be the selling point for people with unique room layouts or who want to avoid having too many cables running to their TV. 

Unfortunately, Dolby Atmos FlexConnect will only be available in new TVs, so you’ll have to purchase a new television that supports it to take advantage of the feature, as existing TV models will not support it. 

Dolby and TCL will be demonstrating the FlexConnect feature at the IFA 2023 show in Berlin, and more information can be seen in TCL’s 2023 Global Flagship Product Launch livestream on YouTube.