Thinking of buying 5.1 surround sonos

Hi guys sorry to keep this going I need just a little more help ! I’ve rang sonos today and they are saying because my soundbar has the optical cable running to tv I should get dd 5:1 !!! Although the tv running at pcm it should still work ??? I rang Samsung and they telling me it’s the settings on the sonos that’s wrong ???? thrown from pillow to post lol anyone live near Basildon Essex lol

The PLAYBAR/PLAYBASE will only be able to interpret a Dolby Digital signal if the TV is passing that kind of signal to it.

Sounds like the folks you spoke to at Samsung are misinformed, there's no "setting" on the Sonos to change from PCM to Dolby Digital, it just interprets those signals as they're sent.

You'll need to check the audio settings on your TV to make sure they are set to Dolby Digital. And at the same time, you need to check the audio settings for all devices that you have hooked to the TV, to see that they're set to Dolby Digital as well. None of these devices should be set to anything else, like Dolby Digital Plus, DTS, etc. Only Dolby Digital.

Right ok il make sure all appliances connected to the tv are on Dolby Digital ! I just can’t turn the Dolby on ! The tv does have it there in the list but it’s in grey and can’t click on it

That may be a problem. Although it may be that way because the signal it's receiving from the device isn't dolby digital itself, so it can't turn it on. However, if you check the input device (like a DVD player) and it says it's sending a Dolby Digital signal, and the option is still grey on the TV, you may need to contact the TV manufacturer to see what's going on.

Hmmm well I’m running a xboxone and PS4 aswell as a sky box all connected
To the tv through hdmi cables ! So I know they are all Dolby compatible ! Sonos have recommended I bypass the optical and put a hdmi box on there ?? I don’t know lol I’m so dissapointed about this ! I’ve been on the phone to sonos for over 3 hours today and they say it’s the tv settings but speaking to Samsung is terrible , just can’t understand them , also don’t know what they talking about half the time lol

Assuming that all are set up for Dolby Digital (they all have their own individual audio settings), it's then up to the TV to pass through the correct data to the optical cable.

There's a lot of posts from people regarding Samsung in this section of the forum, I'd recommend doing a search and see if someone else has figured this out, without using the HDMI/Optical box.

Yeah il look around see what I can find ! Just so difficult when u don’t know much about this stuff

Yea, but once you've got them set up, you'll never have to deal with it again. It's one of those conundrums, you have to know a lot up front, and then never need to remember it in the future (mostly).

From what I understand most Samsung TVs don’t pass through the Dolby Digital via optical. Can you connect one of your devices (probably the Xbox One) directly to the Playbar via optical to see if that works? If so, it’s the TV that’s the issue.

Yes yesterday I took the optical from soundbar to xboxone and then checked my sonos app and I was getting Dolby Digital ! As soon as I conectedmnack to tv I was getting stereo !

I spoke with sonos yesterday and they recommend something like this !!!

I used something like that initially with my Samsung TV. Connected to it was my Xbox, Freesat DVR, BT Box and Blu-Ray.

Although it worked I hated it. The remote only had a range of a few feet and as I had to hide the box behind the TV I had to walk up to the TV to make it work. The other thing is that it did some unwanted decoding of the audio so I had to cycle through various options to get it to pass DD 5.1 (the instructions were very basic). Sometimes it took me more than 5 minutes to get the unit to pass the DD 5.1 signal I knew was available.

I ended up just getting an Optical switch and taking optical out (audio) from TV, BT Box and Humax DVR. It's cheap and nasty looking but you just manually switch and it works fine.

Morning guys I’ve spoken to Samsung again this morning regarding this dd 5:1 and they are saying that the only way this will work is that the sonos sound bar has to be plugged direct to the source I’m using with an optical , whether xboxone or PS4 , or sky tv I have to unplug optical in back of tv and plug direct to the source , so does this mean I gotta get a optical switch or hdmi switch lol

Either would work

As I said above I didn't get on with the 4 x HDMI video/audio splitter.

This is the one I bought from Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0119J94FM/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
As I said It worked but the control via the remote was bad and it did weird things to the audio

In the end I plugged all my sources into the TV via HDMI but too the audio out of each (optical) into a switch I bough tfrom Maplin.
https://www.maplin.co.uk/p/3-way-optical-digital-audio-switcher-l34ak

And yes I have audio out from TV to the switch as well

Works for me

Yeah I thought I’d need a optical switch ! I saw that on the maplins site and will purchase that ! Also il need more optical cables are there any I should avoid or spend a certain amount ?

Just buy whichever suits your length requirements. Don't be tempted to spend stupid money on those that make outlandish claims either. A bog standard non-branded should do just fine

Lovely cheers mate appreciate it

Hey Rlspurs31 How did it all go with finding a solution? I found this blog online as I was researching for something similar for Sonos because I haven't purchased it yet. Just wondering, if you ran your TV signal through your xbox and then your Xbox to Sonos, would that be a solution, or do you use lots of applications on your Samsung TV that you need the Sonos to connect to it? I pretty much do everything through my Xbox (gaming, TV, youtube, DVD, music, UFC, Netflix).