Dealing with HDMI ARC issues on Amp and input choices

This is not much different from the source switch on a TV, but the TV’s display is larger than the AVR display and the AVR has more and better amplifiers.

If the bars wanted to, they could use the HDMI embedded audio or the HDMI-ARC audio.

I have, on one TV, a Switch (and will be adding another game device soon), an AppleTV, a BD player, and a Mac Mini. While I haven’t browsed a lot of TVs except the projection units that fit my needs, I found that it’s hard to even find a HDMI switch that handles more than this. When I add another device, I’m maxed out for the switch. As for the TV, a recent LCD one I bought for use in my study had TWO HDMI ports. And other ones I looked at were similar. I don’t remember if I found any with three or more ports, but I know three would have been the max.

I seriously doubt I’m the only one out there who wants good sound from a product like Sonos and is using more devices than there are HDMI ports on a TV.

True, you don’t have a way to forward the data to the TV, but not everyone needs that - but they do need a way to get the sound to the AMP. (And, by the way, I double checked the Autoplay setting and it’s STILL resetting to HDMI in instead of Line-In, and not always after a power flicker.) Again, this feels like Sonos is saying, “This is the only way WE use our products or want them used, so we’re not going to allow others to use it in a different way that might be useful to them. Works for us. That’s good enough.”

I’m not saying this to be insulting, but when I had an audio receiver in my entertainment center, it was much easier to deal with than the AMP. I wish I had not sold it off when I got my AMP.

Is it possible I need some troubleshooting on the AMP to find out why, even with changing the Autoplay setting, it still keeps going back to HDMI? It’s just absurd that, in this year, with technology at the level it is, and that almost any other device and restart or maintain its states and settings, that something as expensive as a Sonos AMP can’t.

Though most TV’s I know have four HDMI-inputs, I recognize your problem. This will get worse when only a few of them are equipped with eARC for example, that is needed for Atmos and some game consoles. Sonos made a choice, to use the TV as an HDMI hub, instead of letting the soundbar work as such as other manufacturers do. For most users, especially Sonos users this is less complex. For users with more needs this creates a problem.

When using a switch you do not have to stop using other HDMI’s though.

That’s about what I mean: Sonos is thinking, “Do this our way or forget it.” I seriously doubt it would take more hardware to make it work both ways, just software. But why bother? Just tell people to do it “our” way.

The problem with using the other HDMIs is that it can be tough with a projector. The entertainment center is often in front of the room and the projector in the back. In our barn, I have two HDMI cables, but the house is a few years older and I was lucky to get them to put one in. (I usually try for extras on things like that, but it doesn’t always work.) But also, with both projectors I have, and one is a $5,000 model, so it’s not cheap, and it’s from 2019, so it’s not ancient there are only two HDMI ports.

I did try to use the 2nd HDMI port on the barn projector, but, in that case, using both HDMI cables means some devices go through the switcher that provides HDMI and optical audio out and one doesn’t. It’s a lot easier for me, with the projectors, to use a switcher for HDMI.

I'd put it more mildly: Sonos made choices that (they think) work best for their audience ("has money, but no technical knowledge and is not about to get that"). So they've tried to make things as simple as possible. When it is not simple anymore their audience is lost, for instance when something's awry on the wifi front. If this simplicity does not work for you, you're not part of the Sonos audience.

The Arc is meant to work with a TV and only a few connected devices. You want to connect more devices and work with a projector. I very much understand you want Sonos too, but maybe you want to much and so need to look elsewhere.

I didn’t see this earlier, but since I just posted that the Line In autoplay feature still refuses to work properly, I’m looking again.

I think you’ve misunderstood a lot of the issue. “As simple as possible” means, “Works ONLY for these situations.” There are ways the issues I’m talking about can be addressed and things kept simple. I suspect the ARC issue could be handled with software. If so, a setting could be created for it and it could be buried deep in settings so people don’t change it by accident. Or, as is the case every time I have to select “Line In” for my AMP, there could be a warning about what turning off ARC will do.

I get that it’s meant for people who aren’t digging into things, but this setup also rules out most setups with projection TVs. I don’t know what the thought process was that ignored that issue. Maybe the Sonos staff don’t have projection TVs and this issue is outside of their experience, so they haven’t thought about it. Many projection TVs don’t have sound at all. You’re talking about "has money?" I don't know if I qualify for that, but when we set up our barn system, I did spend because I’ve wanted a home theater setup since the days when you had to use 16mm projectors to do that. The projector I use is about $5,000 and does not do sound at all.

It doesn’t have Android or any other OS on it and can’t do streaming. It’s intended ONLY as a video devices. This is not atypical of projectors. Some have sound, but rather cheap, because most people with projectors are using a sound system of some type already. In the case of LCD TVs, for example, the TV may be the hub, but with a projector, the hub is with the devices. In fact, there may not be a single device as a hub. In my case, and, apparently, in many cases, multiple devices are fed into an HDMI switcher.

In that case, to work with Sonos, either the switcher needs to provide ARC (and some good ones don’t, or at least didn’t in 2019, last I was shopping for them), or ALL the devices need to have ARC - and the latter isn't going to happen.

So, @Corry P, when you and others discuss my other thread as a feature request, please make sure they understand this issue: A lot of projection systems are quite expensive and do NOT have ARC. It’s short sighted of Sonos to make people spend another $200 on a device to provide ARC after they’ve already spent thousands on the rest of their system.

And with my AMP, after shelling out for that much for something like that, for me to have to continually go in and reset it to Line In or to have to pay another $200 for a device to add ARC is, again, short sighted. It makes using AMP or any other device that requires ARC a pain (or useless) with a good projection system.

Before this issue showed up, I was planning on replacing my PLAYBAR with an ARC. At that point I didn’t realize ARC was a protocol (again, see what I’ve said about projection TVs), but I quickly decided not to and have been researching what I can replace that Sonos 5.1 system with because, clearly, if Sonos devices require ARC, they’re not equipped to handle home theater with a projection system.

I’m surprised the Line In autoplay feature isn’t working for you, but I don’t use line in personally, so I can’t really comment on that.  However, the line in isn’t designed for use with a TV or projector anyway.  I didn’t see this suggested yet, but you can use the optical adapter to convert an optical signal to HDMI-ARC for use with the Amp.  If your TV can out optical, you’re done.  And there are plenty of devices out there that can extract optical from HDMI, many that include HDMI splitter functionality if your TV doesn’t do optical output.  I would have gone route over trying to use the line in, and I use autoplay for that all the time.  

I don’t think the HDMI port could be that easily modified by software.  You may not be aware of this since you aren’t using an ARC/eARC capable TV, but the HDMI cable between the Amp (or Beam or Arc) connects to the HDMI IN marked ARC on the back of the TV.  It’s an INPUT on the TV.  That means the HDMI port on the Amp is an OUTPUT.  Indeed, if you set the TV to the input connected to the Amp, you would see a Sonos screensaver image.  The ARC audio, actually flows backwards.

So, what your saying is that the HDMI port on the back of the Amp could be converted form an OUTPUT to an INPUT through a software change and flip fo a switch in configuration.  Maybe, I don’t know enough about the tech, but it seems like a bit of a tall order.

I would guess they had marketing data that showed that the vast majority of customers had optical or ARC capable TVs, or would rather soon.  I think they saw that the majority of projector owners tended to have wired dedicated home theatre setups. I also think a lot of customers would have not have been ok with a single HDMI input, no passthrough to the TV.  I think they didn’t want to have to create a new gen of a device just because video standards changed.  I am guessing, but I have little doubt that there are lots of impacts to this that we generally don’t think about.

Pretty much no HDMI switcher provides ARC.  Those that are labeled with ARC that you’re seeing are designed to take an ARC signal from your TV, not generate an ARC signal like a TV does.  The big exception to this is the HD Fury Arcana, which a lot of people on here have.  Mostly so that we don’t rely on TVs to do any audio processing, or if the TV doesn’t have eARC.  It doesn’t work with Arc though, as the optical/ARC solution works fine for most who need ARC.

There are some other products coming out that include a built in switcher, but they aren’t really available yet.

So you know about Arcana already?

For the amp, getting an HDMI/optical extractor + the Sonos dongle should cost way below $200.  If you want higher audio codecs through the Beam or Arc, you would need the $200 Arcana, yes.  From what I’ve seen more soundbars are coming out as ARC/eARC only, that seems to be the way things are going  

I get that this is not great for projectors, but I will say that I like the idea of having a  setup with sources connected to switching/converting device which then connects directly to TV/projector and soundbar/audio system, sending the best quality signal the devices can handle to each.  Your video doesn’t pass through your audio equipment, and your audio doesn’t pass through your video equipment.  When you want to upgrade your audio or video, you don’t have to replace your whole system because passthrough limitations.

There’s no optical input on the AMP. There is on the Playbar (only that and RJ45s), and on the Playbar, it has sync issues.

Okay, good point, and I have to wonder why nobody explained this to me earlier, and I see that as an issue, but this leads to other questions:

1. Does that mean the design is that my TV has TWO inputs - one from Sonos and one from the video source?
2. If the HDMI port is for output, then what am I supposed to use as INPUT for the AMP? (It has an HDMI port, two RJ45 ports, and post connectors for audio in and out.)
3. Where is the audio input on the ARC, which has an HDMI port and an RJ45 connector?

Stll, this keeps them out of the Home Theater market for those with projectors. It may not be the biggest market, but it’s being exclusionary when there’s no need to be.

I’ve looked at the Arcana, which looks like a useful device, but I resent the idea that, to get my AMP working decently with this, I had to pay $700 (which is a nice chunk, especially when it’s so limited in options and design setups and I still have to use my own speakers) and then still pay another $200 for it to work decently.

I’m more likely to use that for the theater setup in the barn, with the big screen and Godzilla (my name for the projector there - named after a laser setup for a show from the 70s) than for the house, but, still, it’s kind of sad Sonos doesn’t work with this - and if the HDMI is an output, again, where does the sound data from the TV go in?

I’m confused at this point. As I mentioned, AMP has no optical connectors. Omitting the RJ45s (since you’re not going to get good sync if you send the audio over a LAN (and I don’t think any video players do that), there are only two possible inputs: Audio post (analog) and HDMI, which you say is an output.

The HDMI switch does have a TOSLink optical output, though. (I use that on the big system to connect to the Playbar - but, as I said, it’s got sync issues.)

So if I use this dongle, I’m not at all sure how I’d set it up with the AMP.

Here’s what makes sense to me: Use HDMI cables and connectors for the whole shebang. I get that seems to be the way it’s going. But it seems clear to me (if not to Sonos) that there are going to be high end systems that do NOT use ARC/eARC. I get that there may be sync issues, but, again, that kind of thing can be in the settings - you have to turn on NON-ARC HDMI and when you do, you get a warning about sync issues and so on.

Thank you for a well thought out reply!

Read what I wrote again and click on the link to the optical adapter.  It will make sense then.

Essentially yes...if you were looking at the back of your TV.  HDMI 1 (usually where ARC is) would connect to Sonos (and show a screensaver) , and HDMI 2 and the rest would be your video sources.  The TV knows to send all audio via the ARC channels to Sonos.

Think of INPUT/OUTPUT as labels for the two ends of your HDMI cable rather than actual flow of data.  Your video data will always flow from INPUT to OUTPUT.  There is always audio data that also flows from INPUT to OUTPUT along with the video.  ARC (Audio Return Channel) flows in the opposite direction, from the OUTPUT side to the INPUT side. So for the HDMI cable between Sonos OUTPUT side) and TV (INPUT side)...Amp/Beam/Arc said video (screensaver) to the TV, and TV sends ARC channel audio back to the TV.  There is also bidirection CEC communication going on, but not vital to this discussion.

Follows the same logic as I just talked about.

Yes it does, not unless you use some additional adapters and such.

You don’t need Arcana for the Amp, as you can use optical with it, via the adapter I mentioned earlier.  Arcana doesn’t work with ARC anyway, it’s eARC only.  It’s useful for the Sonos Arc and the Gen 2 Beam.

With the dongle, HDMI side connects to the Amp.  Optical side connects to your optical cable.  Basically, the optical signal is coverted over to the channels in HDMI  cable for ARC audio.

There are older setups that don’t use ARC/eARC, but everything (sans projectors and small TVs) are going to have ARC/eARC.  For one thing, it’s the only way to get anything more than dolby 5.1 audio out of your  smart TV when your using an embed steaming app and not an HDMI source.

I would agree the ARC/eARC is confusing and possibly not the best solution to solve the issues of sending audio around to the right places, but it is the standard that’s been adopted and implemented.  The old way of having HDMI cables where data only flowed in one direction were easier to understand, but they have limitations too.

@melvimbe :

Okay, looking over everything, I see what you’re saying: Don’t look at input or output in relationship to the device, but in relationship to the cable.

I think a lot of the rest of your last post is clarification, so, rather than reviewing all that, I’m starting fresh.

I see the link you provided, but I still don’t see how it’ll help. I do have an optical output on my HDMI switcher, but no optical outputs from either TV. (For reference, they are an Epson Home Cinema 1450, bought in 2017, the 2nd is a Sony VPL-VW295ES bought in 2019.) Neither manual mentions ARC or using an HDMI port for audio. So if I got the dongle and plugged the optical into the switcher, I’d have an HDMI signal to use for the AMP, but it’s the same as when I used a splitter to take my normal HDMI out and run one cable to the TV and one to the AMP: I’d just be sending the same signal to the AMP that I was before.

I have searched for something besides Arcana for ARC generation. If I’m missing something, let me know. (I even looked up to see if anyone is using a Raspberry Pi to generate ARC - hell, if I had the time, I’d see if I could write something to do that for an Arduino or Pi.)

I have to be honest that it seems to me that the TV is not always going to be in an actual entertainment center. For instance, at my old house, I had the entertainment center on shelves to one side of the fireplace and the TV over the mantel. Having to use two cables seems, in many ways, a waste.

I never got back to you about the Line In not working. While that may not be designed for a projector, it seems to me that if you have a projector, it’s about the only way you can use an AMP for sound. While the PlayBar uses optical and doesn’t seem to need anything like that, I’m betting the ARC does require ARC - which is really stupid, since that almost instantly puts it out of the running for projection systems. (That’s why I say they really need a way to turn that requirement on and off!) You only have to choices to get audio into an AMP: HDMI-ARC and Line In. If you don’t have ARC, then it’s Line-In. And if the AMP would just STAY on Line In without us having to reset it frequently, I wouldn’t feel like Sonos is just arrogantly and cavalierly screwing me (and others, I’m sure) over.