3.5mm audio out to ARC1 in for Sonos Beam

You'd need:

• an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) outputting optical
• the optical-to-HDMI dongle which comes with the Beam

Is the 3.5mm audio signal in anything other than stereo?

Is the 3.5mm audio signal in anything other than stereo?
Such as? It's a two-channel TRS analog connector. 🤓

I guess the point is that the signal coming out of the projector won’t be any sort of surround sound. Seems odd to invest in a projector, and settle for just a stereo signal coming out of it, when using a Sonos Beam.

I’d probably have recommended pulling the audio signal out before it hits the projector, and use optical, instead. But certainly both methods will feed the Beam.

Good point, such as running the Roku stick through an HDMI-to-optical audio extractor. Problem is that the OP seems to want to send analog audio through some kind of transmitter/receiver arrangement, presumably to get it across the room with minimal latency.

Yup, it’s always a difficult thing....do I just answer the question directly, or make alternative suggestions?

Their situation certainly seems challenging. But I’ve always thought using a projector with Sonos speaker provides certain issues that require extra thought to overcome.

I greatly appreciate all of your input! But now I have a change of plans and would love hear if you all agree this would work. Using the projector's 3.5mm audio out into a wireless transmitter that then goes to a wireless receiver that then goes to a ADC w/ optical out to the sonos optical to HDMI dongle got a little messy as you could imagine, so I wanted to see if I could stream line this.

I would now like to use the SPDIF audio out of the projector in conjunction w/ an audio transmitter/receiver pair. The transmitter has a SPDIF in and the receiver has SPDIF out. I would then use the Sonos optical to HDMI tongle w/ the beam. This would be much cleaner than the first option if it works, which I think it will. What do you all think? Thanks in advance!

Link to audio transmitter/receiver pair can be found below

http://www.homespotdigital.com/long-range-bluetooth-transmitter-receiver-set-with-aptx-low-latency-by-homespot-for-tv-pc-pre-paired-wireless-audio-adapter-set/

Not sure exactly how this is less messy, but I suppose it might work. It looks like essentially the same thing, just for SPDIF rather than 3.5 mm. I’m curious that the link you provided says absolutely nothing about supported codecs.

But in any case, you’d need to lock down either the input to the projector, or the output on the SPDIF on the projector to Dolby Digital

I did wonder about using aptX-LL, with transmitter optical in and receiver optical out. There's a tiny loss of quality, which hardly matters for TV audio, but more significantly there's a delay of ~40ms. This, when added to the Beam's 30ms internal delay, could be noticeable. YMMV

Just to correct Airgetlam: the projector would have to be set to PCM stereo. This type of Bluetooth device doesn't support DD5.1.

(I do actually use the same optical/aptX-LL/optical technique to get audio from a TV to headphones, but my TV allows me to compensate for the 40ms delay.)

Interesting, did I miss something in the link that indicated that it didn’t support DD5.1, or is that an unsurprising ‘general knowledge’ thing?

I've never met a BT device that supported 5.1ch. It just isn't what BT audio is designed for, and as far as I know the A2DP profile is stereo only.

Thanks, ratty. I’ve never seen one either, but certainly don’t have much knowledge in that area, as I really don’t pay attention to it.