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New Sonos Amp audio setup. Advice needed on getting digital signal.

  • December 24, 2018
  • 6 replies
  • 3673 views
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Hi all. I am configuring my new Sonos Amp, its connected to a 2.1 speakers setup in my living room, and an older (2011) Samsung TV.

It plays all the regular Sonus sources just fine, but I cannot get it to play via the HDMI setup since the Samsung TV does not support ARC. While my new cable box support Dolby Digital Plus and more, the Samsung TV will only put PCM down the SPDIF (optical out) connection, and it seems the Amp requires Dolby Digital. At the moment, I have the line-out's from the TV going to the Amp's line-ins, but that is obviously analog, and it sounds like it 🙂, but it working. So how best to get digital sound, without buying a new TV with ARC support?

I've been thinking of putting a splitter after the cable box (before the Samsung TV), but that would mean that the Amp is technically not getting an ARC signal, it would be getting the original HDMI signal. This would imply that I need to get an audio extractor to pull the signal off the HDMI feed, and put it into optical, which in turn would use the Optical to HDMI-ARC dongle that Sonus sent me along with my Amp.

But I am not sure that's going to work, and its two more gadgets in the audio signal path that I would rather not have. And that config sounds like it would suffer the problem of losing some of the auto-on, auto-off features that the HDMI-ARC method has. (I don't seem to have those with my analog config right now anyway, the Sonos Amp is on all the time: seems it doesn't auto-on/off when listening to Line-In inputs).

Are there any better ways to get digital sound from my older TV to the Amp?
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6 replies

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  • steveng57a1
  • Author
  • Contributor I
  • December 27, 2018
So I found out a few things. Seems the new Sonos AMP can play PCM or Dolby Digitical just fine via is optical dongle thingy. The problem was in another component in my audio chain: a balun (HDMI extender, via Cat5e) that does not support HDMI-ARC. So essentially what was happening was that the dongle was putting its signal on the ARC path, but the balun was not propagating it thru to the Amp.

The Amp is small enough that I could put it behind my TV, so it removed the need for the balun. I've had to rejigger a few other things all up, like another Infrared extender is needed, and I am getting some nasty hum in the subwoofer (since now that the Amp is behind the TV, I had to use a longer unshielded cable for the sub). I suspect this latter thing is a grounding level mismatch.

At least the main problem is solved and I have a digital signal getting to the Amp.
    F
    • forrwalk
    • Lyricist I
    • January 23, 2019
    did you try a HDMI balun that is ARC certified?

    Im running into similar issue with a Samsung TV and a new AMP in AV closet in another room where all speaker wire run to. First balun we tried wasn't connecting right, found it likely wasn't passing ARC - now we have a HDMI extender balun coming that explicitly states its ARC certified.
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    • steveng57a1
    • Author
    • Contributor I
    • January 24, 2019
    No I haven't tried that yet. I have a workaround in place. In my case there was enough room behind the TV to put the Amp, so I removed the need for a balun altogether. Having said that, at some point I am certain that the urge to put the Amp back in the rack downstairs (where it belongs damnit) will overwhelm me, and I will go that route. Thanks for the tip.
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    • Stacysmith
    • Lyricist I
    • January 26, 2019
    I have the same issue. New Sonos Amp to replace AV receiver. Works great with HDMI-Arc cable strung along the floor. Try to connect using cat 6 and a balun ( Van Gogh brand -sp?) and the sound cuts in and out. Now waiting for another Balin to try. Which balun(s) is/are hdmi-arc certified?
    C
    • cava83
    • Lyricist I
    • May 8, 2019
    Was a solution ever found for this? I'm going to have a similar issue. All my wiring is going to my garage and I would like the Sonos amp there, which would ideally be hooked to my TV which is in another room.
    J
    • Jarrett.S
    • Lyricist I
    • June 19, 2019
    I too have replaced my AV amp with the new sonos amp. I would like to know if there was any solution to this problem and also if the sonos dongle works or is there a delay.

    My TV is too old and doesn't have ARC output so I want to get a digital optical coax signal out of the TV into a convertor to TOSLINK out so I can use the dongle -

    https://www.lindy.com.au/spdif-digital-toslink-audio-converter
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