Dealing with HDMI ARC issues on Amp and input choices

Many A/V receivers can support both HDMI and HDMI-ARC, but the installation is not “plug and play” as is typical with SONOS.

There are still some “kinks” that the industry needs to work out. HDMI needs to serve multiple masters. The movie industry has intellectual property protection as a top priority. In some respects, because of all the hoops that equipment designers need to jump through, I’m not sure if the movie people care if you can play the movie or not, only that you cannot copy it. If the copy protection limits quality in some way, this is OK. As a source is selected there is a copy protection negotiation that must succeed before play is allowed. Failure will usually result in a silent, black screen, however, sometimes there are displayed messages.

Another aspect is the HDMI-ARC that we are grumbling about here. HDMI-ARC requires two different hardware paths and a means for the consumer to work through a maze of setup options. Then there is the maze of video and audio formats. TV’s and audio systems need to negotiate and figure out shared capability. A user could have some legacy equipment that does not support 2K, 4K, or the emerging 8K and 10K formats. A TV or projector that supports only one audio or video format is a non starter. “EDID” (Extended Display Identification Data) is the technology that allows units to negotiate formats. An EDID fail can result in no audio or video as a source is selected.

And, there is “CEC” (Consumer Electronics Control) that attempts to ease control of a large collection of components. The goal of CEC is to allow the user to drop a DVD into a player and the player will power up other units and select inputs without any user action. A favorite CEC fail is the middle of the night cable box update ending with turning the cable box turning ON. The cable box then sends out the CEC notice -- resulting in TV play. Another interesting fail results after turning OFF the TV, and turning OFF the DVD player in an attempt to go to bed. Unfortunately, since the cable box is still ON, CEC can assume that the user really wanted to watch cable, and the TV and A/V system will startup again to watch cable -- requiring another shut down by the user. Since this restart may require many seconds and the user may have already left the room, the user will discover that the TV is playing in the morning.

In my experience SONOS is one of the most capable products attempting to negotiate this maze, but it is not foolproof. On Thursday mornings at about 3:30am cable boxes in my area might be updated. I must be careful to ensure that ARC is muted at this time -- or else. Fortunately, I have an Arcana and I can block this middle of the night turn ON by the cable box.

For community members demanding to know what drives SONOS and why “my” very important issue has not been dealt with, SONOS attempts to minimize support costs and keeps track of every support request. There are also focus groups and this and other communities are monitored. While a few posters can raise quite a fuss in a community, the feature request or “issue” might not be very wide spread.

Recently there was a quirk with the new ROAM causing it to sometimes forget that it was stereo paired with another ROAM. This created a lot of “flames” and, I suspect, support calls. This was fixed with last week’s update.

What buzz stated is 100% accurate.  Connect your switch to the dongle via an opitcal cable, and the dongle into the back of the Amp.  It will work.  This is not a guess, as the very same setup has been recommended to probably 100s before you.  Although I don’t need it, I’ve tested the dongle myself with a Beam.  As you’re aware, your issue is not at all unique.  Sonos created the optical adapter for this is exact scenario, no other reason for it to be even created and sold.

I think you’re over thinking ARC a bit here. I wouldn’t say the dongle ‘generates’ an ARC signal, as generate is the right word here, but the dongle takes the digital signal coming over the optical cable and sends them over the ARC audio channels on the HDMI connection so that the Amp can read that.  Whether that is technically meeting the ARC standard, don’t know, but doesn’t matter since the Amp (and other Sonos home theatre devices)  is designed to work this way. 

As an aside, I don’t like the idea of having an single normal HDMI input for an Amp/Arc/Beam.    In order to use that you would need to have some sort of HDMI splitter or matrix so that you can output to your TV or projector  and to the audio device.  In addition, the audio from any built in TV app has no way to make it to the audio device.  While that doesn’t matter to you or anyone with ‘dumb’ TVs or projectors, including it as an option would probably just more people than it would help.  Maybe most importantly, In the case of the Amp (and Gen 1 Beam), it doesn’t solve any problem that the optical adaptor doesn’t already fix.  A solution where a single port works like straight HDMI with one setting and ARC setting with another seems overcomplicated, when an adapter that’s physical easy to use and see how it works, while easier to support, makes a lot more sense.

To all:

I called Sonos and pressed the button for tech support. That was a frustrating call because the person I talked to did not get that my TV was a projector and most projectors don’t have HDMI-ARC. I had to explain that point to him multiple times. Then he said, “Try this,” and recommended the optical adaptor that we’ve discussed. I asked, “Does that generate an ARC signal?” He was not clear what I meant, so I had to explain, again, that my TV did not have ARC. He asked for diagnostic information and then said, “You don’t have HDMI connected.” So I explained it again!

I finally said, “It seems I’m having to explain a lot to you about how this all works. Can you connect me with someone who has a better technical background who knows how this works?” He said he could and, after being on hold for several minutes, I was disconnected.

I used the video call option. Sonos - that’s a good idea, but please remember not everyone has high bandwidth! I got Tita who was quite helpful and verified that the optical adaptor does NOT generate ARC. We were pretty sure, but I got clarification on that.

For other responses, since I don’t have much time, I won’t quote:

@buzz : I’ve bypassed CEC because of funky issues like you mention. We don’t have cable - can’t get it out here. (We have cellular internet - major upgrade from V̶i̶a̶s̶u̶c̶k̶, er, Viasat!) We did have satellite TV - if you have frustrations with cable, never go for satellite! I finally decided to go with a universal remote that I could program, so we hit “Watch a movie,” for DVD/BD, or “Watch TV” for Apple TV. (I use a digital antenna for local TV and can watch that through the Channels app on my Apple TV.) CEC has good ideas, but glitches still happen. Even with my universal remote, there are issues. For example, it does see that some devices stay on when I change from “Watch TV” to “Watch a movie,” but it does not let me tell it to leave my screen down, so the screen starts going up, then goes back down. I’m working on ways to deal with that.

I have had to add a device to generate EDID signals for my big projection TV.

I think one of the reasons I’m so frustrated with this issue is that Sonos does do simple “it just works” setups and, except for this, it’s always worked in every situation - then I hit this brick wall, where both possible alternatives (Line In not being reset and ARCless HDMI) don’t work. And, when hitting the wall, I’m finding it’s even worse than the similar wall in Apple. Maybe that’s why I’m just so frustrated - there’s no in-between.

@melvimbe : For what you talk about with ARC and single input - wouldn’t using two ports, HDMI and HDMI-ARC work? However I do like the idea of just plugging in an HDMI cable to everything and that takes care of it. I know that’s what ARC is trying to do, but it looks like there’s still a lot of work to deal with.

Wow.  I don’t know what your conversation was like with tech support, but you’ve been given the solution to your problem several times now but you seem to keep trying to convince yourself that it won’t work.

If the adapter doesn’t do what we are telling you it does, what do you think the adapter is for?  Why does the adapter come with the Beam and Arc if it can’t be used to convert optical to an HDMI-ARC signal?  Why does the FAQ for the Amp state the following?

Can I connect my computer to Amp through HDMI and control volume and functions through the computer?

If your computer outputs audio through an HDMI ARC connection, you can use it to control Amp. Additionally, the Sonos HDMI Adapter (sold separately) allows you to connect a computer with an optical SPDIF output to Amp.

Why does the support document for setting up the Amp state the following?

When using Amp as front TV speakers, check your TV’s HDMI ports to confirm that your TV supports HDMI-ARC. If your TV doesn’t have an HDMI-ARC port, you will need an optical audio adapter to complete TV Setup.

Legacy HDMI and HDMI-ARC use different pins on the connector for audio. Legacy HDMI sends audio to the display device, the HDMI-ARC channel accepts audio from the display device. HDMI-eARC is simply a more modern, more capable version of HDMI-ARC. eARC is required for advanced audio formats, such as Atmos. It doesn’t matter if the SONOS dongle supports eARC or not because TOSLINK (optical) does not support the bandwidth required for the eARC advanced audio functions.

Do you mean the dongle? If I believed the dongle would work, I’d get it, but the idiot said no and the person I got through a video chat (you see them, they don’t see you - interesting!) said that it does NOT create an ARC signal. It will pass an ARC signal along, if one is available at the optical end, but it won’t create it.

That is the FIRST point I’ve seen that says it generates ARC. But what bothers me now is the page says so and tech support says no. Note that before I called tech support, it was discussed at length here and nobody had reason to believe this adaptor generated an ARC signal. This is the first source that says it does.

Note, also, that we had a Sonos employee checking in on this conversation earlier and he did not suggest this as a solution.

With those points in mind, I think I have reason to be skeptical.

I’m going to go on and order it, but I suspect that what they mean is if there’s an SPDIF port for output instead of HDMI. My reason is that we can see Arcana is $200, and this is $25, and I doubt Sonos (or anyone) would do this in that small a space (smaller than an Arcana box by far) and charge so little for that. Also, as I said, the smart tech support person said it can’t do that. (I don’t care what the idiot said!)

The good news is that Crutchfield has these in stock, which means I’ll get next-day service (they’re really close - great company and people to deal with and everyone knows their stuff!). Even better, I cashed in some of my reward points and it’ll be here Thursday.

Side note: I looked through several sources to see if there are any products other than Arcana that generate an ARC signal. I saw products on Amazon that say, “We don’t generate ARC, you need Arcana.” I found Arcana on Amazon for $299! It sells at $199 from the website normally and lower if you buy more than one.

You’re getting too hung up on words  Dongle...adapter...whatever.  The device that has been referenced several times, and it looks like you’ve now purchased is the answer.    As I stated before, I wouldn’t say that the dongle/adapter generates or creates an ARC signal either,  What it does is allow you to convert the audio coming through an optical cable to something that the Amp can read and process.

You’re skeptical because your hung up specific words, probably not asking the right questions on your call to tech support or confusing them by asking about generating an ARC signal rather than asking if the dongle/adapter will resolve your issue.  The quote I provided doesn’t even mention the word ‘generate’, yet you’ve chosen to decide that it does.

Arcana takes a normal HDMI input and converts it to HDMI-eARC (or ARC apparently), while also sending video to a display, and quite a few other features that aren’t relevant for this discussion.  The dongle/adapter  allows an optical audio signal to be processed by the Amp.  Two entirely different things.  You’ve seen the product description  and features for Arcana, and even if the features don’t make sense to you, it should give you some sort of understanding why Arcana costs so much more.

The SONOS ARC accepts only HDMI-ARC audio or HDMI-eARC audio. Therefore, it’s a reasonable assumption that the SONOS dongle creates HDMI-ARC audio from TOSLINK. I guess the SONOS support agent is being strictly correct in stating that the dongle does not create a full HDMI-ARC because HDMI-ARC is a two-way connection, but TOSLINK is only one-way audio.

Again, HDMI-ARC audio uses a different set of pins in the cable from legacy HDMI. Unless the hardware path exists to access the other set of pins, there is no chance for a software upgrade to suddenly start flipping between HDMI audio and HDMI-ARC audio.

The SONOS dongle is a very simple device. ARCANA is rather complex because it deals with full video, EDID, and CEC.

I don’t know which universal remote you are using, but you may be able to use this device to control your screen by with arbitrary IR transmissions, rather than depending on CEC. Another approach would use power sensing of the projector. Power sensing could be a box in the power cord or, if you are lucky, there might be a power switched USB port on the projector.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote (roughly) words are a sign of natural facts. That doesn’t mean they’re always the exact description, after all, a rose could go by any other name. No, I’m not hung up on the word or name for this device other than that I go for a convenient word that I can use to label a specific object. In programming, basically, I’m passing by reference. While I used to each English and could go on at length about when a word is important and when it isn’t, I could also, since I was a special ed teacher, go on at length about word finding issues and learning disabilities that create word finding issues for people. I’m one of them, so thank you very much for making me dump that out and making part of the conversation about my learning disability.

While I’m dealing with this issue, I’m dealing with a few quite stressful issues for the house and our lot. When I get stressed, I don’t sleep well and get tired. When that happens this issue comes up and gets worse. I can say, “Please have a seat in the ---- uh….” and someone will have to help me with the word “Chair.” Today I was talking to someone about replacing a leaking tub and couldn’t remember the word “Tub” until she said it.

So when I can easily and quickly “grab” a word for whatever reason, and use it as a label, and it’s not inaccurate, I use it.

Dongle.

It’s a dongle. It’s an adaptor. I don’t care what you call it, it’s still cable with a TOSLink connector at one end and an HDMI connector at the other end.

So freaking thank you for making this part of the conversation when it’s clear exactly what I’m referring to and any dwelling on that was not necessary.

Generating ARC - I’ve plugged an HDMI connector into the AMP and received an error when I tried to use it. It stated, clearly, that there was no ARC signal and that it needed configuration. Then, as I went on, it asked about the TV and the ARC signal. I don’t remember the terms, but it was quite clear, in the setup it was having me do, that I had to provide it with an ARC signal.

So MAYBE that dongle, Dongle, DONGLE works. Maybe it doesn’t. We’ll know know that when I get it.

Oh, by the way, did I point out that one Sonos employee here did NOT suggest it as a solution? Did I point out that one tech support guy said it was NOT the solution?

So I made the logical conclusion in the face of those points.

We’ll soon see if it’s right. But when TWO employees (granted, one is an idiot) say it’s NOT the solution, when the configuration tells me it needs ARC because I can't continue until there’s an ARC signal, and the one employee in the conversation does not even bring it up as a solution, does it make sense why it doesn’t seem like a solution?
 

You’re saying that when a converter takes the electrical signal and converts it into light, then, at the other end, it’s converted back to electrical, that the data on the output end is not the same as on the input end? Or that the data, when carried through an optical connector is not the same as the data in the HDMI connector?

I find that extremely hard to follow, so I’d really appreciate a breakdown on it.