Not 100% sure, but I don’t know that I would completely trust LG on this.  It may be that their TV can pass through the atmos format, but doesn’t have it on it’s smart apps, or vice versa.  You might want to just test it out before you get a new TV.

There has been one device suggested earlier on this thread, but I don’t think it was 100% confirmed yet.

Well, I’ve enjoyed my Sonos 5.1 system for quite awhile, and I used to have the Samsung n950 Dolby Atmos wireless system. The Samsung bar was nice, but the surrounds and subwoofer were horrible (the sound was very weak)..not even close to sounding as good as the Sonos. I’m glad that Sonos is finally going higher resolution, it was quite inevitable. I’m doing a “wait and see” if the ARC will work smoothly with my Apple TV 4K streamer. I’m just curious how my beam will sound after the update, because I’m on the fence of pre-ordering the new ARC right away. I really like the way the ARC looks, it looks more streamlined, but very curious on how it sounds.

I’m curious with the Arc, is there any benefit to having Fives as your surround speakers rather than Ones.   Everything I read prior to the Arc was that it was a waste of money to have anything other than the Ones.   Can anyone provide an opinion or thought on this?  Does the Arc make better use of more substantial rear speakers than the previous Home Theater speakers from Sonos did?   Thank you!

I’d suggest there’s no advantage to having the Sonos Five as surrounds versus the Sonos Ones.

I'm exactly the same.. Had the 950, wasn't over impressed with the surrounds/rears.  Decided to go 'simple' and had the beam plus a couple of play1's.  Although it's nothing fancy, I swear the sound is better...never looked back.

Im also thinking of waiting to see how this pans out..and although my Sammy Q9fn is causing a few limitations in regards to earc, there are potential workarounds as discussed on here.

I sold my aTV 4k and went down the nvidia shield route..hopefully that might prove beneficial in this instance...not that I've got any problems with it otherwise. 

I agree. The Sonos 5 are more for bookshelf speakers when you want to listen to music. The Sonos 1 make perfect surrounds, Sonos 5 would be too overwhelming. You don’t want to emphasize the surrounds too much.

Dolby Digital Plus is the compressed codec that among other content can carry Dolby Atmos. Your TV needs to be able to pass Dolby Atmos through, and your sources need to be sending Dolby Atmos as well. Even if you don't have Atmos coming in, you’ll still probably get Dolby Digital Plus, which sounds great. As to if you'll get Atmos, that depends more on the TV and the sources. And not everything has Atmos either. For example, the HD Netflix service has some things in with Atmos, and lots without. 

Regarding the eARC/projector/splitter discussion - forgive me for not having read past page 5…

HDFury vertex2 has the following in it’s description:

Vertex² now support ARC and eARC sound extraction from TV for up to Atmos high bit rate over TrueHD forwarded to any AVR input via Vertex² HDMI audio output

It does read more as though it’s about unpacking an eARC datastream into a different format, rather than packing an audio stream into eARC.
Catering for the case where an AVR doesn’t support eARC but a TV does. This honestly seems like a more useful choice given I assume most receivers would support direct audio streams _in addition to_ eARC.

eARC (for up to Atmos High Bit Rate over True HD) is possible when eARC TV is connected at Vertex² HDMI video output, extracted sounds from TV APPS will be output from Diva HDMI audio output that can feed any AVR input.

That does suggest that the device is actually doing an eARC discovery and protocol negotiation, or the TV wouldn’t be _sending_ any audio stream to capture. Unfortunately I couldn’t easily find whether eARC is a symmetric protocol, so no idea if it should be able to play as the other side of that connection when forwarding..

That said I’m hopeful, given how versatile their products are and the fact they use FPGAs rather than ASICs. I’ve asked their support whether it’s a viable use case and if not will enquire about potential firmware updates. 

Can Sonos look into the same? I’m really hoping that it’s possible in firmware to determine that it’s not an eARC signal and try treating it directly as an Atmos stream. Or allow that configuration from the user via the S2 app.

I’ve got a vertex on the way because it honestly seemed like a cool piece of kit to have for those times when I just cannot get hdmi devices to talk to one another, so I’ll be able to provide an answer in a little over a month. If it doesn’t work, then I guess I have a very expensive asthetic upgrade to the playbar and will be listening to Dolby Digital for a while.

(I found this doc useful for a high level overview of eARC implementation details)

Update - found a response from HDfury in avsforum that notes it will not do what we need:

https://www.avsforum.com/forum/37-video-processors/2902961-hdfury-vertex-owners-thread-163.html#post59617606

So there is not one product, AVR or other that can solve this for us?
 

This might not be the best place to ask, but i have only one shot at this and want to do it right.

Invested deep into Sonos products, i waited for a Playbar replacement for a long time. When Arc was released, i ordered it straight away, together with a wall mount. However… I am kind of stuggling here if i actually need a mount, or if it would actually be better without.

Let me explain my situation:

I recently replaced my LG 65E6 with a 65C9 OLED and i’m about to wall mount it. The ideal mount height for the middle part of the TV is at eye level, for me that would be around the 105cm (41 inch) mark. The cabinet that is going to be under the TV will be 42cm (16.5 inch) in height. That leaves me approximately with 21.5cm (8.5 inch) of space between the bottom of the TV and the top of the cabinet. Knowing that the height of the Arc is 8.7cm, i will only have about 13cm (5.1 inch) to play with.

Do i:

1. Wall mount the Arc, about 10cm underneat the bottom of the TV and let it ‘hover’ over the cabinet? I’m not sure its worth it, but at least the sound wont deflect of the top of the cabinet as much, as the bar hangs ‘free’ and all cables will be hidden behind the wall.
2. Put the Arc on the cabinet, all though i would not like it to be put right at the front edge because of cables being shown. But this would result in deflecting from the top of the cabinet? And isnt the Arc seating too low at 42 cm?
3. Mount the TV heigher to create more room for the bar to be mounted, all though this would mean that the TV isnt on the ideal height…

What would you guys do?

and @Ryan S what would technicaly (looking at the Arc) be the best thing to do?

I would keep the TV at the right level as IMO this is much more important than the height of the sound bar. 

I would put the Arc on top of the cabinet. Move it around front to back on the cabinet to see if it makes any difference to the sound (please post back if you notice big differences), find the best spot and enjoy.

Thanks for your input.

I am kind of leaning towards this one also at this moment, does TruePlay factor in deflections and so on?

I’m sure it will, otherwise there wouldn’t be much point of TruePlay. But then again, there can only be ’so much’ adjustment, not infinite, so I wouldn’t expect miracles. Basically as much change as it can currently do. 

Although it’s not the Arc, I’ve actually both the setups with the Beam...hovering between  TV and cabinet and placing on the cabinet near the back.   I think both options look good and both sound good...but again Beam and Arc are not the same.  Obviously, placing on the cabinet is the easiest option.

The one thing I’d say that most places, it’s technically not with local code to have power cables behind the wall that are made for that purpose.  I opted to use a race way rather than building a 2nd outlet just for the Beam or having wires exposed.  

Hi,

I am new to Sonos, but was considering buying the Arc Surround set - but am a little confused about the “One HDMI” port? I am familiar with eARC and my 2020 OLED supports it. That said, I am planning to go multiple inputs to a (high end) HDMI switch (full bandwidth) then into the soundbar, then out to the TV. Otherwise it’d be impossible to connect my 5 input devices (not counting the TV)). How would that work if the Arc only has ONE HDMI port?! Or does Sonos mean it’s ONE input and ONE Output?

eArc doesn’t help me here as far as I can tell/

Tanks

It's one input only.  Sonos soundbars are designed so that sources connect to the TV directly, and the TV sends audio to the Sonos device via ARC or optical.  In your case, go from the switch to a non-ARC input on the TV, then HDMI-ARC out on the TV to the HDMI in on the Sonos Arc.

Thanks!

That’s interesting. Is that a fairly straightforward setup with no downsides? I come from full-on Amplifier setup, so the in/out always seemed natural to me.

In this case - I would have 5 devices into the HDMI switch, then into, say, input 1 in the TV, and eArc out to Sonos as you say. Meaning… I would leave the input on the TV on the same input 1 all the time (I wouldn’t ‘switch’ to the eArc HDMI - say, Input 3 - under this scenario ever?

I just want to avoid switching conflicts - the TV input should be a constant (and the output to Arc as well)…

Thanks again

so I'm clear. the Arc will still get audio from the same optical cable I'm using with my playbase from my TV. Thus my TV must be ATMOS capable to get the ATMOS. LG OLED b557a has this? Cant find online for sure. assume it does. also from what I have been reading my old subwoofer and play 1’s will be compatible?

What high-end HDMI switch are u using if I may ask?

That is correct.

The Arc can use the same optical cable your playbase used, however, it’s impossible for Atmos signal audio to transmit over an optical cable.  For the Arc to play Atmos content, it must receive the content over HDMI-ARC or HDMI-eARC.  Your TV will need to have a HDMI input labeled ARC or eARC.  I tried to find information on your specific TV, but had trouble finding a manual or picture of your TV’s input to confirm this.

Your existing Sonos sub and play:1s will work with the Arc.

It can, using the same adapter used by the Beam when connected to optical. However, you will not get Atmos from that arrangement as there is not enough bandwidth available In optical to carry the Atmos data, so you’d be restricted to Dolby Digital. If you want to get Atmos content, you must be using either HDMI ARC or eARC.

thx both of you guys. Looking to get the ARC to mainly upgrade to ATOMS.Thats what all my compatibility questions are leading to. I do have an HDMI in (ARC ) port on the side of my TV. the word “in” confuses me. With my playbase the optical cable run from the out port on the TV to PB. So how come the HDMI arc port is an “in”. doesn’t sound flow from the tv to the ARC device.

It’s technically both. It can receive data into the TV, but it returns audio on the ARC channel (ARC = Audio Return Channel).  In the case of the Arc, there’s not much going in, and the Audio from all the other HDMI inputs is going out.  So say you have a cable box, a streaming device, and the Arc, and your ARC capable HDMI is HDMI #1.  You connect the Arc to HDMI #1, your cable box to HDMI #2, and your streaming device to HDMI #3.  To watch cable, set the input to HDMI #2 and the audio goes out over the ARC channel of HDMI #1.  Same thing with the streaming device, set input to HDMI #3, and the Arc will get the audio over HDMI-ARC from HDMI #1. 

No.  There is not.  I said what HDfury said like 6 pages ago here.  It won’t work because Sonos’ products have HDMI outputs, not inputs.  If this doesn’t work with your TV, you will need a new TV.  Or someone has to innovate a new product designed to solve for this, but I have major doubts that will happen.  It would be pretty complicated given the way the Sonos Arc is designed and it would be a product that in some number of not so distant years would be completely obsolete as all the new TVs will have eArc/Atmos support.