Hi

Are there any IR repeaters in the area of the Playbar?

Nope, no IR repeaters in the house.  It happens every single time regardless of the remote used.

How about the IR repeater on the Playbar, is that switched off?

The IR repeater in the app is switched off and also disabled.

If I try the remote control setup through the app and force it to go through the manual setup to ‘train’ the soundbar the process is to press vol+ three times, vol- three times and mute three times.  For me the vol+ and vol- work ok but when asked to press mute after two presses the app says it didn’t detect a signal from the remote, even though the light was flashing on the playbar.

This is frustrating as I cannot mute the sound on the TV, I can only turn the volume all the way down.

Which make of TV/remote is it? For the vast majority of devices the Playbar should train for the remote using just a single vol+ press, since it already knows all the standard codes. It wouldn’t normally demand all 3 buttons to be pressed.

It’s a Samsung.  It does normally train on a single vol+ press but that doesn’t change the behaviour - I have tried forcing it through the full training routine to see if that makes a difference, but it does not.

Is this a Samsung remote which talks Bluetooth to the TV? If it doesn’t use IR to the TV there could be config options in the TV to tell the remote which IR codes to use.

FWIW I originally used standard Samsung IR codes with a Playbar and a universal (OneForAll) remote without any such problems. 

And, just to double-check, it is a Playbar, connected by optical, and not an Arc/Beam or some such?

Yes it is a Playbar connected by optical and it’s an IR remote control. 

I get the same issue regardless of which remote I use, I have tried

• main tv remote
• the secondary ‘simple’ remote you get with the Samsung
• the FireTV remote 
• the TV controls on my Humax freesat remote
• a remote for an old Samsung TV

Strange. And you’ve obviously tried re-training the Playbar. And simply powering it off and on again?

Do you have other Sonos devices? If so you could try a factory reset of just the Playbar and re-adding it. Normally factory reset isn’t advised by I seem to recall resorting to the nuclear option with my old Playbar.

Your comment about the optical connection prompted me to try something different…

If I stream music through the Playbar with the TV turned off all the remotes work as expected, I can mute ok and the vol up/down moves in a single increment.

If I turn the TV on (without switching to a channel playing audio) the issue starts happening - even on the Playbar streamed audio.

I then disconnected the optical connection (with TV on) and it started working ok.  When I plugged the optical connection back in the TV displayed a message about setting up the Playbar to work with the Samsung ‘Smart’ Remote and the problem returned!

Seems to be an issue with the Samsung TV and their not so ‘smart’ software! 

Thanks so much for everyone’s help on this - looks like it’s an incompatibility with something on the TV, at least that gives me something else to search for. 

If I manage to get it fixed I’ll update this thread with the solution.

So your TV can sense that an optical plug is inserted, and does something different as a result? It cannot know that there’s a Playbar at the other end, since optical is unidirectional. 

It’s beginning to sound as though the TV, sensing an optical component, is itself repeating the IR codes. Perhaps it thinks it’s being ‘helpful’ to an external soundbar by issuing IR codes when it receives volume commands via Bluetooth.

Time to start digging in the TV settings. 

When I plug in the optical it goes through some setup...and then confirms with a ‘SONOS Setup Complete’ message.  I assume this must be the TV doing this.

Frustratingly I can find nothing in the TV settings that would allow me to configure any kind of IR repeat option and nothing obvious has turned up on Google.  Will keep digging...

I wonder how on earth the TV knows there’s a Sonos on the end of the optical. Like I said, it’s unidirectional. The Playbar has no way of sending anything back to the TV. Did you ever tell it you had a Sonos speaker?

Could the TV perhaps be poking around on the network and finding the Playbar that way? Mysterious indeed.

Whoop! Fixed it!! 

Today I learned there is such a thing as the ‘Samsung Universal Remote’ setup on the TV.  When you plug in the optical connection between the Sonos and the TV it automatically registers it as a device on the TV. 

With the Playbar registered the TV somehow sends extra IR codes when changing volume or muting the sound.  Once I deleted the Playbar device from the Universal Remote on the TV everything started working again.

For anyone else having this issue you can get into the settings following these instructions:
https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00050204

There are no options you can change for the registered devices so I just had to delete it from the setup.

@ratty - I have no idea how it knows there is a Sonos at the other end!

Thanks everyone for your help :-)

Those universal remote instructions appear to relate to control of external HDMI devices via HDMI-CEC. HDMI is of course bi-directional. 

I’d be intrigued to learn how the TV knew about your Playbar...

@ratty - I posted the instructions to show how to get into the menu on the TV as I didn’t even know that function existed on the TV!

I have just tried disabling the wifi on the TV and re-connected the optical and it identified it again. 

My setup is really simple, Playbar has optical connection to TV and power cable only.  TV is connected to Humax Freesat box and Amazon Fire Stick both by HDMI.  I have other Sonos speakers and they all connect over wifi.

I have no idea how it recognises it as a sonos device! Could there be some bluetooth magic going on as well?

No Bluetooth. As far I can recall Playbar doesn’t have the Bluetooth Low Energy which later devices use for setup. The mystery continues.