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Connecting Fire TV 4k Stick directly to Sonos Beam because Gaming Monitor has no HDMI Arc or Audio Out

  • 28 March 2020
  • 3 replies
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So, I currently have a Samsung 43" Q60R QLED Smart 4K UHD TV connected to a Sonos Beam with a Fire TV 4k Stick and a PC connected to the TV via HDMI. Samsung falsely advertises the monitor as "Freesynch" in graphic callouts on the web page for the product but the fine print says it doesn't have it for the 43 and 49-inch models. So now I'm looking at the ROG Strix XG438Q gaming monitor so that the AMD card on the PC can output the best video to the screen. However, there's no HDMI-Arc on the monitor and the only audio out is 3.5" and has no 5.1 sound. There's no optical audio out on the Fire TV stick (or cube) so I'm trying to figure out if there's some way to split the HDMI out of the Fire Stick so that audio can go to the Beam. The PC also has several 3.5 audio outputs for 5.1 sound that way and wonder if there's something that might accept the audio from the PC via the several 3.5" jacks and the HDMI from the Fire TV which then forwards the video on to the monitor.

I'd sacrifice the Freesynch and great gaming video before giving up my Beam but I'd hate to lose either. Any ideas?

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Best answer by controlav 29 March 2020, 00:09

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3 replies

controlav
Userlevel 7
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Forget the 3.5mm jacks, they wont do you any good for this. An HDMI/optical splitter is probably the way to solve this, to get an optical signal from the Fire stick you can then feed into the adapter that came with the Beam.

Author of the leading independent Sonos app for Windows, the only Sonos app for Xbox, and a Sonos app for iOS
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I found some two-in, two-out HDMI splitters. Couldn’t the Firestick go in one incoming port, the PC go in the other incoming port, and then the two outgoing ports go to monitor and sonos? Shouldn’t the audio carry through the HDMI even if it’s not Arc? I know you can’t use any Alexa features but won’t it at least carry the audio?

ratty

HDMI-ARC uses different pins for the audio return. You cannot plug a standard HDMI feed into a Beam.

Use an HDMI audio extractor. They typically output the audio via optical. Then connect the optical to the Beam using the included optical-HDMI dongle.

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