Dealing with HDMI ARC issues on Amp and input choices

Hi @TangoMe 

Thanks for your post!

It certainly sounds like you’ve got a bit of an unstable power supply. I presume you have checked the integrity of the Amp’s power cable and connection? Have you tried plugging it into a different mains outlet?

It could be that the UPS is unable to immediately supply enough current for all the devices connected to it and power dips in the first fraction of a second. You may find that a power strip with power spike filtering will help the Amp, though I cannot promise anything. I assume an upgrade of the UPS would also serve.

The input used isn’t so much a setting that gets saved, but a choice made by software - if you reboot that software, then the choice goes back to it’s default. The same can be said for grouping. The priority here, I think, is to stop the power interruptions to the Amp, and the setting not being saved will no longer be an issue.

As for HDMI, splitters and switchers are not supported for these very reasons - we simply cannot assume that any of these devices will work, as we know nothing about their build quality or mode of operation.

The audio that comes from HDMI source devices, intended for a TV, is on different wires inside the HDMI cable than the ARC audio, and this is why you cannot simply connect a HDMI source device to an HDMI audio device and get audio. Line-In is not recommended for TV audio due to the fact that it is digitised and pre-buffered prior to playback, whereas HDMI audio is played as soon as possible to reduce lip-sync issues. I recommend you use HDMI-ARC, if you can, though I appreciate that projectors don’t supply it. This is why we do not support the use of projectors - you’re often forced to use splitters which are also unsupported.

Do you have Line-In Autoplay activated? If not, please go to Settings » System » [Amp Room] » Autoplay (under Line-In section). This should make the Amp switch to Line-In after the reboot, assuming the source is still playing. If it doesn’t, you should be able to mute then unmute the source via the remote which will then trigger the autodetection (though I think you may need 5 or 10 seconds of silence for it to work).

Finally, if you feel that there is some kind of fault with the Amp, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team. If you are sure that the power issues are not due to a fault in the Amp, then I can only recommend you get these fixed for best operation.

I hope this helps.

TangoMe,

The SONOS ARC and BEAM, TV’s, and A/V units can have only one HDMI-ARC connection.

Normally, audio and video are sent from an input device (Cable box, DVD, Blu-ray, AppleTV, etc.) to the TV. Now that modern TV’s often include “Apps”, there must be a method for sending audio from the TV to the A/V receiver, BEAM, or ARC. It would be convenient if only a single cable is needed. This is the purpose of HDMI-ARC. In most home A/V systems there is only one TV, hence there is only one HDMI-ARC. The HDMI-ARC connection on the TV is wired to the HDMI-ARC connection on the A/V system or Sonos ARC. In general, 3rd party boxes inserted between HDMI-ARC ports do not properly handle the audio and control signals.

Explore the possibility that your UPS does not start fast enough. Simply force a power outage for your barn system and observe ARC’s response. If the UPS is too slow for ARC, ARC will reboot.

What I find interesting is that I have a projection TV on a similar UPS (same model), a computer, the Amp, an Apple TV, and a BD player all on that UPS. On others that are the same model, I have the other TV, an arcade game machine, other Apple TVs, computers, and much more. We have a whole-house generator, so with these UPS’s in place for these systems, the 40-50 seconds it takes for the generator to come online is not an issue for equipment going down. This includes my media servers, home automation hubs, a firewall, a TV tuner (with ethernet output), and more. So with all this sensitive equipment on UPS devices, it seems odd to me that the Amp is the ONLY one that freaks out with a power flicker.

We have projection TVs in both locations (our house great the home theater in the barn).  I get that a lot of people use smart TVs, but there are a lot of us who have spent thousands on good projection systems. Those TVs are not running an OS and loaded with apps, but, damn, yes, they can be a big investment.

I’m not clear, but it seems like the Amp is set up for one way of doing things. I’ve spent a good chunk of change on my projection TVs, although that was a few years ago. Neither has an onboard OS or ARC. They’re not designed for that, but they work well with Apple TV or any other box like that I’d want to use.

It feels, and I’ve run into this before, which is why I almost dumped Sonos in 2019, when we renovated our barn and set up the home theater setup, of going in another direction. It just feels like Sonos decides, “This is how things will work, and if that’s not your setup, well, it should be.”

(I’m still peeved that my Playbar, which is what Sonos was selling in 2019, had to use optical connections rather than HDMI and my consultant at Crutchfield said that’s probably the reason the sound goes out of sync. I had considered updating to an Arc to replace it, since the Arc uses HDMI, but now that I’m reading this, I figure it’s pointless and I may have to redo the whole 5.1 system if I want synced audio, since, I’m sure, the Arc will require Arc as well and not work with a projection TV that doesn’t use it and for which I use a HDMI switch so I can use my game console, a computer - for more games - a BD player, and Apple TV.)

Arcana is a great problem solver. HDFURY has a bunch of other products that can work through HDMI issues.

I used a PLAYBAR for the last 7 years or so, and never had a lipsync issue on either a Sony TV or a Vizio TV.

Sonos devices are, of course, limited by playing the signal as quickly as they receive it, so any lipsync delay would be due to the device providing the signal to the PLAYBAR. 

The Sonos PLAYBAR was originally released in 2013, which implies the design was created earlier than that. At that point, I don’t recall ARC being a ‘thing’ that any TVs had. Seems odd to be angry about Sonos designing and selling a device that matched the majority of TVs at the time. 

Unless there are different models, one point there is that the Playbar does not have HDMI input, so ARC is a total non-issue. The only connections (other than power) are optical and ethernet. My product advisor (again at Crutchfield, a company I trust - they haven’t led me wrong yet) has said that he has had complaints from several people who were using the optical cable for sound about sync issues.

Now, if there were a way to pull the audio from the HDMI cable and send it to the Playbar by ethernet AND do that quickly enough that syncing isn’t a problem, that would be a solution. But with the Playbar, the only actual audio input is the optical connector.

My main complaint is about the Amp, a newer product, that won’t work with HDMI input only and requires ARC. With a projection TV on the other side of the room from an entertainment center, most people are not going to have an extra HDMI cable going that far.

Thank you! I’m looking into both. That kind of research takes me time, so it’ll be a few days before I can look over both of them.

I did this. I can’t remember if I did it on my iPhone or through the Sonos control panel, but I did it. Then I checked to be sure the Amp was on Line-In and muted it again. (I hear background noise when the Amp is not muted and everything else is off, so I have to mute it - since I can’t turn it off.)

A day or two later, after no sign of any power flickers (maybe one happened at night), we turned on the entertainment system and there was no sound. The Amp was, again, on TV as opposed to Line-In.

I’d go with the 4K-Arcana, but that’s $200 and is a lot to spend on an issue like this. I may use that, though, in the big screen setup, if I put in an Arc, which I’m thinking of doing. (I just don’t know what to do with the Playbar - my main reason it’s a problem is that the Playbar does not always stay in sync with the image and my advisor tells me that happens with optical connections, the only thing Playbar can use other than ethernet.)

Hi @TangoMe 

If you hear a background noise even when nothing is playing, I recommend you get a “ground-loop isolator” to fit between the Amp and it’s Line-In source device - this will remove the noise, and the removal of the noise will allow Autoplay to function as intended. There are a few kinds, with different connections, so please make sure you get a RCA-RCA model. Thankfully, these devices are pretty cheap.

There is nothing intrinsic to TOSLINK (optical) that will cause lip sync issues, but processing inside the TV could cause trouble. Note that there will always be a slight latency (about 35ms) between HDMI audio input to AMP and output. Latency is about 75ms for analog Line-In.

Cheap analog ground isolators are not always effective enough. If you try a few cheap, ineffective isolators, Jensen will eliminate your ground loop, but may be uncomfortably expensive.

As a quickie trial, try disconnecting the cable TV feed from your cable box. The CATV feed is a very common source of ground noise. Properly grounded CATV feeds are not usually much of an issue. There are ground isolators that can be installed in the CATV feed, but they often disrupt the signals. Again, the cheap isolators are more likely to be problematic.