Help needed: Audio setup with existing kit (1 Viewer)

[peridian]

Hi,

I need to figure out how to best cable up the combination of my kit. I'm trying to avoid having to replace my existing home theatre sound system.

I originally had the following:

42" Sony Bravia TV (did not support ARC, used digital output)
Sony BDV-E4100 Home Cinema (recent purchase, before I decided to replace the TV)

I used the HDMI for video, and digital in for audio, worked fine.

I have recently purchased the following kit:

55" LG OLED B7V TV (4k, supports Dolby Atmos)
Sony UBP-X700 Blu-ray Player (4k, supports Dolby Atmos)

As I understand it, Dolby Atmos is not supported over a digital cable, only over HDMI.

The TV has plenty of HDMI ports, and supports ARC.
The Blu-ray player has an A/V HDMI port, an audio only HDMI port, and a digital output.
The sound system has only one A/V HDMI port and a digital input.

How do I best setup the sound for all this? Can I get the Dolby Atmos to work from both the Blu-ray player and the TV through the sound system?

Regards,
Rob.

 

[JohnRice]

Your system (the Sony BDV-E4100) isn't capable of Atmos. I looked several places, and the specs on it are extremely vague. I can't tell if it's even capable of HD Audio, which makes be suspect it isn't. It definitely isn't capable of 4K, but fortunately your 4K player has dual hdmi outputs. So, you connect the Audio/Video hdmi output directly to your TV with a 4K compatible cable. Then you connect the Audio hdmi output to your Sony BDV-E4100 hdmi input. To get 4K, you must run directly from the player to the TV. Any connection between the Sony and the LG TV would only be to get audio from the TVs streaming apps back to the Sony. I wouldn't even bother with ARC, which is a lot more of a pain than it's worth. Instead, if the TV has an optical output I would connect that to the Sony for audio from your streaming apps, assuming you are going to use those. If not, no need to bother.

There's an enormous amount of confusion about ARC, which is usually more trouble than it's worth.

Again, to be clear, you can't get Atmos without replacing the Sony and getting more speakers. Atmos is actually rather complicated to implement.

 

[JohnRice]

BTW, I looked up the TV, and I know it claims to "have" Dolby Atmos, but no TV can implement Atmos. The TV really has nothing to do with Atmos. That's just marketing BS. I see LG has an "Atmos" soundbar, but I'm sorry, you simply can't effective (or even ineffectively) implement Atmos with a soundbar.

You might look at THIS thread, for some experiences of people here with implementing Atmos.

 

[WhereYou]

Using the HDMI converter connect from the Blu-ray player to the TV, and connect the Sony BDV-E4100 Home Cinema to the converter by optical cable.

 

[peridian]

Thanks for the information, it's been really useful.

I ended up connecting the 4k blu-ray to the TV via HDMI, and the TV to the Home Cinema via both HDMI and Optical Cable (the latter, I think, being where the sound is coming through, even surround from the blu-ray).

It was odd, when I connected the TV to the Home Cinema via HDMI, I switched on the options to use ARC, and the TV clearly had control over the Home Cinema, there just wasn't any sound actually coming through the speakers. When I connected the Optical Cable (with TOC) it worked fine (I'm assuming it's ignoring the HDMI cable and purely using the Optical).

It picks up sound from all sources just fine, it's just not as good quality as the actual built-in speakers on the TV, presumably as it is not HD audio. The downside to the TV speakers is that I end up having to turn them up to make out speech, which results in the music and sound effects being much louder, so I chose to stick with the Home Cinema to get a more even distribution across the speakers.

Thanks again.

Regards,
Rob.

 

[WhereYou]

This one may help you.
https://www.amazon.com/Tendak-Split...-46&keywords=hdmi+switch+with+audio+extractor