It took me a while to crack this, I could not find anyone else writing about their success online, and I’m SURE I’m not the only one with this problem. I hope someone else finds this helpful:
I have a projector set up on one end of the room, and want the sound to come from the screen in front of me, not the projector. Without a TV, I’ve got nothing to generate an HDMI ARC signal -- Sonos doesn’t create it, my reciever can’t create it, and even the projector can’t create it, so Sonos wouldn’t let me use HDMI at all. Even if they could have, I can’t run an HDMI under my floor or through my walls, and I really didn’t want to trip on the cable. My reciever has plenty of optical input slots, but no optical out. Bluetooth has been serving us well for carrying the sound across the room -- quality is WAY better than I expected -- but the BEAM does not accept Bluetooth Input. After trying and failing with a lot of different ideas, here’s what ultimately worked:
Fire TV Stick → BenQ HT2050A projector → short 3.5mm stereo cable → 1Mii B03 Long Range Bluetooth 2 in 1 (Transmit mode) ------------→ MiiLink Bluetooth 2 in 1 (Receive Mode) → 3 foot short 3.5mm stereo cable to RCA cable (ie one end is headphone jack, the other end is two pronged red and white) → Musou RCA Analog to Digital Optical Toslink Coaxial Audio Converter Adapter → Sonos Optical cable to HDMI converter → short HDMI cable → Sonos Beam (Gen 2)
AND IT WORKS GREAT!
Side notes:
I also popped in a 3.5mm splitter after the Bluetooth receiver so I can run sound to my old reciever/speakers/sub woofer in parallel, but honestly it doesn’t add much. The little Sonos Beam 2 outperforms the whole (very) old rig on everything I’ve been listening too here.
The A/D converter, Bluetooth Transmitter and Bluetooth Receiver all need independent power (the Mii units take USB-C and include the cables)
The FireTV remote (Bluetooth) won’t work with Sonos (IR) but an old XBox IR remote worked just fine to control the volume, and of course there’s voice control if you like that better.
Next I’m going to put my older Play:1’s on the back wall by the projector for surround.
The Sonos Optical to HDMI converter shipped with the Beam (10/2022), and I already had all the parts except the A/D converter which set me back only $16. Even buying everything between the projector and the sonos would have been a lot cheaper than any other options I could find.
I hope some of this is useful to others trying to set up a projector with a Sonos soundbar! Good luck.
