Apple GarageBand Latency, Would Amp Solve?

My reply was clumsily worded. I wish SONOS had not named their device “ARC”. I suppose that someone thought this would be a clever wordplay — suggesting that “ARC” could be connected to HDMI-ARC, but “ARC” works best when connected to HDMI-eARC.

The reality is that there are two sets of pins used for audio — depending on transmission direction. One set for simple source devices and another for TV’s that are sending App audio back to an A/V receiver. The chipsets at both ends of the connection need to sort this out. If the operator elects to use a TV App, the A/V receiver must switch from sending audio to the TV to receiving audio from the TV. And, some ARC devices, such as “ARC” will send back status info (over yet a different set of pins).

“ARC” attempts to be plug-n-play. I think that it would be confusing if an option would be hidden somewhere to switch audio pins.  It’s certain that someone would get this wrong and we and SONOS support would have many discussions about this. Plus, someone would want to play audio CD’s on a DVD player that required selecting commands from an on-screen display.

@buzz it’s even worse. There’s a difference between Arc and ARC. The first is the name of the Sonos speaker, the second is the abbreviation for Audio Return Channel.  Talk about confusing!

Yes, and to some extent my posting tradition is not helpful because I like to upper case SONOS model numbers. This was very constructive when describing how to connect a SONOS CONNECT to an amplifier, not so much when discussing Arc and ARC, or in my case “ARC” and HDMI-ARC.

I’m clear on ARC=audio return channel and basically how an ARC or eARC port is needed in the receiving device.

What I didn’t get about @buzz sequence, was why my monitor is able to use macOS sound ouput via HDMI and my Sonos Amp cannot function similarly? It was the, “...monitor acts of is a sink...” portion of Buzz’s text.

I’d really like my Sonos Amp to use the HDMI port as a “line in”, instead of the RCAs. I guess you can only bend a use case to far, in that I get Sonos is not designed for music production playback.

Still the RCA line-ins are working well for my Sonos One SL pair/sub mini acting as my “Studio Monitors” with 150ms audio delay dialed up in S2.

It would cost at least $699 to get a 2.1 wired set up for my production studio, and then I’d have an additional pair of two speakers and an extra sub’s form factor to deal with at my desk, lol...

ARC is HDMI-ARC or HDMI-eARC only.

@buzz, as near as I can tell, the early models were indeed in all caps anyway. But there’s inconsistency between marketing and code implementations (the system report of “my Sonos System”, for instance). All very frustrating and confusing. I’ve traditionally taken the split of all caps and normal English (Chicago Manual of Style)  capitalization to be anything produced after the PLAYBASE. 

But yea….I feel the pain. And I don’t know who the “cute” one in product management who keeps naming these things, but…. (I mean, how often have I typed “connect the CONNECT” or use ARC on the Arc, etc. Not to mention the silliness between the PLAY:1 and the Sonos One. And yet there’s no Sonos 1…..gah!)