Can someone explain to me how on earth HDMI ARC is supposed to work?

ARC in my experience either works immediately without problems or not at all.

At home on my Star and pretty old Panasonic HD TV, about 2012 vintage I think, it worked without problems and I just assumed that it was a reliable system. It was only when talking with others who had problems that I discovered that it is often problematic and not the simple plug and play system I had believed it to be.

Recently, it was brought home to me, how with some setups it is a nightmare. For my parents on their Muso2 and nearly new Sony Bravia no amount of playing with settings could get it to work via HDMI ARC, the dealer even went out to help resolve this. In the end, the optical link was used.

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I have a Samsung TV and ARC works seamlessly into my Marantz AV pre-amp, it was the same when I connected to my Mu-So whilst my power amp was being serviced.

As Pipdan noted above you may need (must in my case) to enable Anynet+CEC on your TV for ARC to work. It is located under System>General>External Device Manager.

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Is there an audible difference b/w HDMI ARC and Toslink?

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Unfortunately Anynet+CEC is enabled, when I search for devices it can’t find any at all.

I’d set it up from scratch, but suspect that might be a faff, and in addition it won;t let me as I’ve not used the PIN for years and it isn’t the default one.

Did find a sequence to get into service mode and may try a factory reset from there.

Another thought under System> Sound>Sound Output have you set the ARC HDMI input to Receiver(HDMI)?

Well I’ve spent the whole day virtually trying different HDMI cables, eventually having move the Nova off the rack closer to the TV to try shorter newer cables, and also done some dusting/hoovering behind the system so naturally it will all sound better jst for doing that! Have also tidied up some LPs I’d not put back on their shelves and cleaned a few which I’d not re-sleeved which were filthy.

The nut I’m trying to crack is to get Apple Music lossless to play to the Nova via HDMI ARC, I may just give up at this stage!

Funnily enough I have just found a long enough optical cable to hook up to the Samsung TV hopefully when the Nova is back in place and I can get audio via that - if only Apple hadn’t got rid of optical out on their post AppleTV 3 models, that would have been a far simpler solution.

I may be wrong, but from reading around the hi-res audio and Atmos needs to be delivered by HDMI, so in theory it should be HDMI ARC outputtable to the Nova, however I cannot even get the TVs own audio or my Oppo’s audio to playback via HDMI ARC.

The optical out sounds fair in honesty (currently with cheap as chips phonos from the Nova to my 282) until it’s back on the rack - trouble is all the Naim app shows is 48kHz for the optical in, so i can’t get much more info than that, and many TVs used to limit digital audio quality when relayed from other sources.

The issue is that Apple have not provided a simple solution for anyone to send hi-res audio to their hi-fi without DACs hooked up to portable device via USB connection kits - what a faff.

Not sure I have that option in the menu but I’ll check - it’s a 55" JS9000 I got in 2016, no longer supported and has had its last firmware update. I should have known better than to get a curved screen model too - many people experiencing vertical light bleed at the edges as ‘layers’ are starting to separate due to the curved edges.

The other thought is that my Nova may have an iffy HDMI port so it’s not detecting any inputs.

My money is on the Samsung TV if you cannot get it to work. Using ARC a lot myself I have been taking note of the comments on the forum and it seems that the connection from Samsung can be flakey.

Thing with HDMI ARC is that not al manufacturers follow the spec perfectly as well AFAIK.

I have an LG TV and the ARC is solid as a rock (touch wood).

I also use the latest Apple TV. But have it downmixing to stereo in the sound settings. This way I could also get the most volume rich result.

Two thougths:

  1. As mentioned above you have to be sure the sound is being output from ARC is not as pass through. The Naim cannot process undecoded surround, although when I tried that I got a horrific hiss from the speakers.
  2. My connection is 48kHz, so if you are looking for 96kHz I dunno if that will be possible.
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I run an LG to Nova via HDMI and another LG to Chord MScaler/DAVE via optical, actually not much in it, HDMI integrates to use one handset but apart from that not a great deal.

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Well if nothing else I’ve found:

  • A long optical cable which should allow me to send audio to the Nova for TV/movies with no Airplay lag
  • A 2TB portable drive
  • A 2TB Samsung bare SSD
  • An unopened Xbox 360
  • Several LPs I forgot I’d purchased
  • A realisation I buy many things and forget about them - yikes!
  • Stuff (an armchair) between my SBLs is killing the soundstage
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:laughing:

I am most concerned about the unopened XBox 360. HOW COULD YOU??!!!

The only right answer is: “Cause I was playing on the Playstation instead, man!”

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Also found this:

Only had it a couple of weeks, but was seriously tempted to open and try it to block out the vacuum noise of the Project record cleaner which sounds like a bloody jet taking off!

I am sorry Sir! Forget I said anything…

Slinks away after getting Dexter feels

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I really need to get into gaming again.

Kids initially thrived with apps on iPads.

Got them both Nintendo 3DS a few years ago which were great.

Have an old PS3 primarily purchased as a BluRay player, rarely used. PS 1 is stored somewhere too.

Son has a PS4 Pro. Bought a few ‘18’ games for me but just found them boring.

We also have a pair of Nintendo Switches and son has the portable one. He’s gaming mad.

Annoyingly I got that Xbox 360 2 years ago - there were arguments as to whether daughter should have it as he had the PS4 Pro, he wanted it, so did I, in the end I stuck it on a bookshelf and found it behind other dross today :neutral_face:

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No time like the present. You have an unused XBOX haha.

I spend way too much time on Battlefield V on the Playstation :man_shrugging:

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Must take a peek.

Naturally son wants a PS5. I did suggest we build a gaming PC so he could learn about the hardware aspects but forgot about that idea, that offer is being called in after end of term results :+1:

PS5 has been on my wish list so long I have forgotten about a time when a shortage of CPU chips would not delay stocks of a major console for about a year.

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Is availability still poor?

Yup. Over here you are very lucky and persistent if you can get your hands on one.

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