How to connect Sonos Arc to TV, Yamaha Receiver, Direct TV, DVD player, Blue Ray Player, Cd Player

  • 26 November 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 296 views

I set up my new Sonos Beam (but I am going to switch it to a Sonos Arc) to my LG Smart TV.  I couldn’t figure out how to connect the Beam to the receiver so just connected to TV.  

Problem 1:  I only get the Beam to produce sound from streaming TV.  I tried various configurations to get my Direct TV stations to have sound thru the Beam with no luck.  

Problem 2:  My TV is only a year or 2 old.  It only has the Arc Hdmi port and 2 more HDMI ports, and 2 usb ports.  I believe I have to use the Yamaha Receiver to connect my DVD player, Blue Ray Player, CD Player to my tv. But how do I get the sound to come thru the Beam, or Arc?

Problem 3:  I also would love to get my Yamaha Receiver’s radio to come thru the Beam.

Problem 4:  I’ve read some of the conversations on similar problems and I hope I am wrong, but it seems that Sonos made very good quality wireless speakers but made them so they can not be connected to a receiver.  It seems many people are in the same predicament where we have receivers to connect more components than even modern TVs have HDMI ports.  Why didn’t Sonos think of this as a huge problem?  It seems like so many people, and I would say the majority of people, have used this type of set-up for years and even have updated their receivers and TVs but we can’t use them with Sonos Soundbars, Speakers.  This does not make any sense to me.  

Thanks for any help y’all can give me!!!  :)


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3 replies

Sorry, but I forgot to add that with my Sonos Beam connected to my LG TV, I can’t get the TV speakers to work either.  I mean that because my Direct TV sound won’t go thru the Sonos Beam, I thought I could at least have my TV speakers on for Direct TV so that I can still watch TV while searching for answers.  But only like very low muffled sound from TV speakers.  I don’t know how to fix that either.

THanks!!!1

Userlevel 7

This is how you should connect everything:

Connect the Beam to the TV’s HDMI ARC port. Connect the Blu-ray player and the DIRECTV box to the other two HDMI ports. You don’t need the DVD player, CD player, and receiver anymore. You can play DVDs and CDs on your Blu-ray player.

What specific model TV and Blu-ray player do you have?

These are my own thoughts on this topic…

Users tend to connect their Receivers/Amplifiers line-in/out to a Sonos Port product to get their audio out/in to their Sonos ecosystem and in any HT setup, the TV is usually considered to be the primary hub device, to which all A/V sources are connected, usually using the available HDMI ports (including those available via any attached HDMI switches). The TV has ‘two’ common digital audio output ports for A/V audio, either its Optical port, or an (enhanced)/Audio Return Channel over HDMi - HDMI ARC/eARC.

The Sonos Beam, or Arc, therefore uses one of the TV digital audio output ports to receive/play the audio from that primary TV device (Its usually the HDMI-ARC/eArc port that’s used nowadays) - ideally the connection needs to be both ‘direct’ and ‘quick to play any TV audio in lip-sync with the video on screen to it’s built in, or bonded, speakers that output up to a 7.2.4 surround sound HT system.

Placing anything in-between the Arc and the TV, such as a Receiver is likely going to interfere with that timeliness of audio and cause issues and the Receiver is mostly replicating what the Sonos/TV/Switches are likely to be doing already anyway. 

So, from a personal perspective, I would choose to use either a Receiver, or a Sonos Home Theatre system, rather than perhaps attempting to use both connected to the same TV, as they likely will not output their audio in perfect sync with each other anyway.

I think @GuitarSuperstar’s post is the best way forward here and to do away with the other products, or make use of them with an entirely separate TV in the Home.