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I was looking to replace the PolkAudio sound bar in my home theater setup and the Sonos ARC came highly recommended. The problem is I can’t figure out a way to connect my Pioneer receiver to properly work with my system. Currently I have:

Sonos ARC
LG OLED65CXPUA TV
Pioneer Elite VSX-84TXSi Receiver with the following plugged in:

  • Apple TV
  • Xbox Series X
  • Onkyo Laserdisc Player
  • Panasonic Blu-Ray
  • Verizon Fios Tuner

I want to use the Pioneer to keep managing my HDMI connections, but have the sound play properly through my Sonos ARC. My receiver does have a TOSLINK optical Audio out, and my TV is e-arc compatible, but I am not sure what would be the best way to get optimal sound from my Sonos.

I know my setup is unique, but I am hoping that others have gone the route of going from a “dumb” soundbar to a more modern one using their older receiver.

I am not looking to buy more components at this point, so any thoughts the community may have in regards to helping, please keep that in mind.

Thank you all in advance.

Can you connect the Arc to your TV’s eARC port and connect the Pioneer from the HDMI OUT port on the receiver to an open HDMI port on your TV?

Since your TV is equipped with eARC, you should consider connecting a couple of your devices directly to the TV like your Blu-ray player, Xbox, or Apple TV.

GS - Thanks for the response. I’ll give the eARC solution a shot and see if it works. I’m not sure if that will affect my equalizer presets or not, but it’s a start. Have you set up your ARC this way with a receiver? If so, do your equalizer presets remain?

Connecting multiple devices to the TV kinda takes away from the elegance of having a single HDMI cable going though the wall to hook up my TV and would require hooking up those devices into the side of the TV instead of the hidden ports in the back, so for practical purposes it wouldn’t make sense for my TV which is wall mounted, but I appreciate the suggestion. 

I don’t have a receiver in my setup so I can’t answer your first question.

The reason why I suggest connecting a couple of devices directly to your TV is I am concerned that your older receiver won’t send the best possible audio formats (like Dolby Atmos) from the connected devices through your receiver and TV to the Arc. Removing the receiver in the chain would eliminate any conversion or downgrade of audio.

Ah. Understood. I will give that a shot then as it is easy enough to hook up my Apple TV to the side of the LG and test the sound output.

I know the receiver won’t send Dolby Atmos, but at present that isn’t something I’m worried about. As long as I can get Dolby and DTS 6.1 I’d be happy. Atmos can wait for next year’s receiver upgrade. ;^)

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