How to make surround work via HDMI ARC (Sonos Beam with two Sonos One SL, Apple TV 4k, BenQ W2700 projector.)?

  • 2 October 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 917 views
T

I have a Sonos Beam and two Sonos One SL speakers in a surround setup.

Surround works fine when playing music from my iPhone to Sonos via AirPlay, or when choosing Sonos as audio output via wifi on my Apple TV 4k. Sound is coming from all three speakers.

However, the Beam is also connected via HDMI ARC to my projector (BenQ W2700). The projector has two HDMI ports, Port 2 is receiving the signal from my Apple TV 4k, Port 1 feeds into Sonos Beam. The projector only provides the audio return channel on Port 1.

Choosing the default HDMI audio output on the Apple TV seems to only use the Beam, but not the surround speakers (there is no sound at all coming from the two One SL). Am I doing something wrong or is it not possible to have surround when the Beam is receiving audio via HDMI ARC?

 

My setup:

  1. Apple TV 4k is connected via HDMI to Projector (BenQ W2700)

  2. Projector is connected via HDMI ARC to Sonos Beam

  3. Sonos Beam is in a surround setup with two One SL.

  4. Everything works great, except for the Apple TV 4k sending audio via HDMI ARC to the Beam. The surround speakers do not output any audio. I tested this with a lot of different audio sources on the Apple TV 4k. Music, Youtube Videos, Netflix, etc.

 

On a sidenote: I tried to use the ethernet port on the Beam, since I have all of my hardware located on the same shelf (router, apple tv, sonos beam, projector). Setting up the Beam without wifi, while the two Sonos One SL *were* using wifi seemed impossible though. The Sonos app couldn’t find the speakers and I had to switch everything to wifi again. If all the Sonos devices are in the same LAN, why doesn’t this work?

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3 replies

Annazel S
Userlevel 5
Badge +16

Hi @ttSonos2020.

Thanks for reaching out and welcome to the community!

I appreciate your detailed post here, let me help and check it for you.

All of our home theater products, including Sonos Beam, were designed to be used with TVs.

That said, some projectors may be compatible if they support HDMI ARC, eARC, or Optical.

No worries, some of the community members that have the same setup experience might provide their own opinion about this anytime soon.

 

On the other hand, if the Beam is not getting a connection when wired directly to the router via ethernet cable, please check the following:

  • Ensure that the controller is connected to the  2.4Ghz band.
  • Try different ports and ethernet cable
  • You may also try to connect a different Sonos speaker (it will help isolate the problem).
  • Please check the Beam’s Wifi, it has to be enabled to let other Sonos components connect on the SonosNet: How to disable or enable WiFi on your Sonos players
  • Kindly provide the make and model of your router so I can check if there’s any known issue or configuration needed.

 

Hopefully, that helps but if not, please submit a diagnostic report while it’s wired to the router, I'd start by reviewing your system and see if there’s anything causing this issue.

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O
Userlevel 4
Badge +6

On your Apple TV, under video/audio make sure that convert sound is on, and set to Dolby Digital 5.1. Next, make sure that your projector is passing through audio bitstream via HDMI ARC.

T

Thanks for your replies, @Annazel S and @oriboaz .

 

As it turns out, my projector only outputs 2 audio channels via HDMI ARC (not sure if that still counts as “audio bitstream”). So the setup I had in mind simply won’t work.

 

I’m now resorting to choosing Sonos (via wifi) as audio output on my Apple TV manually every time. This would be fine if I had to do it only once on the Apple TV, but the Sonos system seems to disconnect whenever no audio was streamed for a certain time (something like 10-20 seconds of silence is enough). If there is any way to change this behavior, feel free to let me know.

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