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I wanted to share this in case someone else runs into the same frustrating issue I did:

  • TV: TCL P7K QLED Google TV (2025 model)

  • Soundbar: Sonos Playbar (2015)

  • Connection: Optical cable (no HDMI ARC)

  • Remote: TCL stock remote (IR + Bluetooth hybrid)

🧨 The Problem:

The Sonos S1 app wouldn’t complete remote pairing. Sometimes it would recognize the first Volume + press, sometimes not. If it did, it would fail on Volume - and say “volume control with optical is not supported” (which is nonsense — Playbar is designed for IR+optical).

  • Disabling HDMI-CEC on the TV didn’t help.

  • IR confirmed working via phone camera.

  • Bluetooth turned off didn’t work.

  • Factory reset on the bar made no difference.

  • Universal remote wouldn't pair either (even though it had worked with the Playbar before).

✅ What Finally Worked:

After all else failed, we just started mashing the requested buttons repeatedly during setup like we were speed-running a boss fight in a video game.

Literally just kept pressing Volume + rapid-fire at different angles, and eventually Sonos accepted it. Same with Volume -. If one of the steps timed out, hit the ‘back’ button once and try that step again. 

Moral of the story: If everything else checks out, and Sonos sees some input but won’t pair, go full gamer mode on the remote. Don’t be gentle.

Hope this saves someone 2 hours and some sanity.

Hi ​@MooseMoose, welcome to the Sonos Community!

Thanks for sharing the steps on how you were able to get your remote working with your Playbar.

I had a look into our internal information but didn’t see anything that explained why you received the message “volume control with optical is not supported”, especially since our support article for using a TV remote with Sonos says that “Sonos products connected via an optical cable or the Sonos Optical Audio Adapter require you to manually set up your TV remote to control the volume of your Sonos home theater product.”

It definitely is supported after performing the remote control setup, so I assume the message displayed in error or wasn’t fully displayed. If you do see the error again, please try to capture a screenshot and reply here with it, though since you’ve fixed the issue you likely wont.

I’m glad you were able to resolve this issue however and I hope this helps anyone else who runs into the same issue.

 

Every single time you change the volume with the remote, you get this message. While you change the volume.

That’s a message generated by the TV set, Sonos has nothing to do with it. 

I’m having the same issue. TCL TV (2025) and remote wont IR to playbar (Gen 2). Optical Cable connection. Tried the ‘mashing’ technique but no luck so far. 

@JarrodP001 - TBH we’ve given up and are changing the volume through the Sonos app on our phones. The remote control is infuriatingly slow for sound anyway. Made a strong mental note never to get Sonos again. 

Yeah fair enough. Think it might be that it’s TCL as I have another soundbar with a Sony TV and that works no problem. Cheers, J

I am having the same issue, but the button mashing technique did not quite work. I had disabled BT for the tv and tried to pair the remote with the speaker and it seemed like it would not work at first. But after some button mashes, it seems like a small percentage of the presses were actually recognized by the speaker.

So while pairing was successful in some sense, I had to press like 8 times for the speaker to recognize it even once.

Hi ​@MooseMoose, welcome to the Sonos Community!

Thanks for sharing the steps on how you were able to get your remote working with your Playbar.

I had a look into our internal information but didn’t see anything that explained why you received the message “volume control with optical is not supported”, especially since our support article for using a TV remote with Sonos says that “Sonos products connected via an optical cable or the Sonos Optical Audio Adapter require you to manually set up your TV remote to control the volume of your Sonos home theater product.”

It definitely is supported after performing the remote control setup, so I assume the message displayed in error or wasn’t fully displayed. If you do see the error again, please try to capture a screenshot and reply here with it, though since you’ve fixed the issue you likely wont.

I’m glad you were able to resolve this issue however and I hope this helps anyone else who runs into the same issue.

Hi Jamie, I have the exact same problem, Got Connected via the “mashing-mode”, but I need to push the volume buttons many times for it to work - though the mute button works every time.

Also gets the “Soundoutput doesn’t work with Optic connection 🫣🤔
Have you any idea how to fix the issues ??????

Hi ​@VikingWarrior,

Since the TV is generating the message, it’s likely that the TCL TVs don’t allow this: looking online, I can see others mention the same problem on different websites. On TCLs support page, it also states that “some TV’s don’t control optical output volume...”, so if you’ve done what I suggested in my original post, then using the Sonos app would be the way to adjust the volume with this TV.

It would be best to reach out to TCL directly to ask about this message and if there’s any solution to it, however, I believe that this TV just isn’t capable of adjusting the volume of devices connected to optical, at least not consistently since you have to press the control buttons multiple times.

Hi ​@VikingWarrior,

Since the TV is generating the message, it’s likely that the TCL TVs don’t allow this: looking online, I can see others mention the same problem on different websites. On TCLs support page, it also states that “some TV’s don’t control optical output volume...”, so if you’ve done what I suggested in my original post, then using the Sonos app would be the way to adjust the volume with this TV.

It would be best to reach out to TCL directly to ask about this message and if there’s any solution to it, however, I believe that this TV just isn’t capable of adjusting the volume of devices connected to optical, at least not consistently since you have to press the control buttons multiple times.

Hi Jamie,

do you know if it works with a HDMI cable ?

 

What should work? There’s different things mentioned above. Besides that, the Playbar only does optical, not HDMI.

Having similar issue on new TCL TV.  Turned off Bluetooth etc & can see IR signal. When trying to setup soundbar, I get one light from sound bar, but then fails to complete the config.

Playbar can be controlled via another TV remote, so just an issue with the new TCL remote

What did TCL’s CS group say about it?

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