I thought I had a simple solution to the lack of a headphone connection in my Sonos setup. And I was not interested in spending money on a Connect if I didn't need to.
Why not, I thought, have an optical audio switch in line before the signal goes to the Playbase? So the audio connection would be from TV into the switch, and the switch would have two optical audio outs. One would feed the Playbase, and the other could go to my AV receiver (which is no longer the main source of output now that I have my surround setup)(a Playbase, a pair of Play:3's and a Sub. The AV receiver is perfectly fine, just unused) With a switch in line, I could choose only the output I wanted.
My plan works great by manually unplugging from the Playbase, and then plugging into my AV receiver. I plug my headphones in to the AV unit, and I get my desired effect: headphone sound for me, and no output from the surround to wake up my wife. When I want to switch back to the surround, I unplug the optical audio cable from the AV unit and plug back into the Playbase.
Obviously, that's not a practical solution. Moving equipment around to get access, wear and tear on the end of the cable, etc. However, there doesn't seem to exist just an audio optical switch with 1 in and 2 out, or even a 1x3.
There's a ton of 3x1 switches (3 in, 1 out) and a ton of splitters. But splitting the signal means that both the surround system and the AV receiver would be outputting sound, not what I want.
I am really surprised that something as simple as this doesn't exist, or at least seem to.
Anybody else ever attempt to do this?
- Jeff
Best answer by Chris
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