something went wrong while trying to turn on spatial sound

I have the exactly same issue. Connected through an Yamaha RX-a3040 receiver (HDMI 2.0 and dolby atmos support) from a rtx 2080 (sli) Graphics card. Previously i had gtx 970 With exactly the same issue. The only time im able to enable atmos for home theatre is after a fresh w10 install, if i fiddle With any settings at all after turning it on i get the same Message as everyone else here.

Atmos Works fine as long as it's managed via the Application (and not the spatial audio Interface). The spatial audio Interface is clearly broken for many users...

Wow I had the problem even after reinstalling Windows, that Dolby Atmos always worked 1-2 weeks with multiple restarts, and then suddenly it didn't let me activate it in Windows anymore without changing anything!

Also strange was, that downloaded Dolby Atmos videos were playing correct with a pass through of Atmos sound but Windows refused to activate it in the system! 

Your suggestion worked! I right clicked NVidia Audio drivers under "Audio, Games...", chose to select update driver locally, chose "High definition" instead of "NVidia High definition", ignored the warning, now working again without reinstalling Windows. But the system did not change, NVidia drivers are 1 week old but all of a sudden Dolby Atmos won't work. What a mess. At least I have something to get it working again without reinstalling Windows.

Wow, now after days after this "trick". It happened again. I can't enable Atmos for home theater anymore. I did all the things I tried before and the trick isn't working anymore. And this happens out of nowhere, I didn't even install anything. WTF. I can reinstall Windows again and again and I have it working for 1-2 weeks...

2080ti >(HDMI) Onkyo 656

I have a Marantz 7012, and once I updated my 1070 drivers to the new betas today I no longer can use the Home Theater Dolby Atmos. 

I went ahead and bought the Dolby Atmos for Headphones- and now it's at least working under that setup.

Alright. I found a solution to the problem i had. I had atmos going for month. Then suddently, i couldn't swap to atmos anymore in the sound settings. I just got the message "Something went wrong when trying to turn on spatial sound". What i did was, that i troubleshot the audio. So i right clicked on the sound icon, and did "trouble shooting sound", and then i selected my soundbar, and the trouble shooting said it fixed something, then i restarted the pc, and i was able to select atmos once again, without no error message. Hope this helps somebody.

Guys, I finally found the solution!  Got it from this post back in 2017

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows\_10-hardware/hdmi-passthrough-on-windows-10/1ae5b26a-7277-4a42-9c49-6b41702878e4

DanielPerez Rodriguez

.THE WAY WORK FOR ME IS IF YOU POWER ON FIRTS THE RECEVIER, THAT WAY THE COMPUTER RECOGNIZES THE DRIVER EFTER THAT TURN ON THE PC CHECK IF WORK FOR YOU

I just tried this, and Boom!  Just selected dolby atmos and it worked!!!!  Don't know how long the manual fix will work for but at least now I have a way to force it to work.  Unplug hdmi cable to your receiver, for me this is an absolute pain, start computer up with hdmi unplugged to receiver.  Once computer fully started, (I verified computer was fully loaded by remoted desktopping to it) plug hdmi cable to receiver.  Log in to computer and immediately select dolby atmos.  I kept the receiver on at all times during the process.