Has anyone ever successfully connected HDMI output from a Mac (e.g., MacBook Pro) or a Raspberry Pi to HDMI input of a Muso?
Shouldn’t this be possible?
In my case several MBPs and RPi5 utterly fail to recognize that Muso is connected (known good cables).
The Muso HDMI input is not completely foobar, audio from TV’s HDMI ARC plays fine.
Are you using HDMI ARC outputs on these devices? If not, they won’t work.
I expected that ARC is only needed for TV’s HDMI ports that are typically inputs, no?
The HDMI ports on computers are explicitly output, but since ARC bit(?) is not present Naim muso just choses to play dead - is this correct?
They are HDMI ARC inputs for taking the Audio Return Channel from an HDMI ARC input on a compatible TV or Soundbar. Connecting to a regular HDMI output from a source such as a DVD or Blu-ray will not work. For those you will need to connect via s/pdif.
My Muso 2 is used as a soundbar with my 6 month old Samsung TV. I connect the TV into the HDMI ARC on the Muso2.
Hit and miss as to whether it works. Currently the muso’s volume contol is on despite me setting it to off when using the HDMI input.
I don’t have a RPi 5 but the sound quality from a RPi4 is very poor in any case. I would strongly recommend a digital output either in the form of a “hat” or just a USB digital audio interface. After all the old saying is “rubbish in rubbish out”.
That’s what is odd about the situation, Naim seems to be very coy about having HDMI audio input (same as USB), is is not at all what one would reasonably expect. Per [HDMI - Wikipedia]:
Audio return channel (ARC) is a feature introduced in the HDMI 1.4 standard.[41] “Return” refers to the case where the audio comes from the TV and can be sent “upstream” to the AV receiver using the HDMI cable connected to the AV receiver.[41] An example given on the HDMI website is that a TV that directly receives a terrestrial/satellite broadcast, or has a video source built in, sends the audio “upstream” to the AV receiver.
Hardly anyone builds computers with HDMI input so there is no “Return”.
Authoritative response from Naim and/or clarification of the specs would help.
Well duh, HDMI is a digital output!
Do tell more about “USB digital audio interface” though.
The HDMI is ARC in with CEC (Consumer Electronic Control - allows you to control the volume of the TV or soundbar via its HDMI-CEC ARC socket).
There are many usb devices that support output of high quality audio via spdif, toslink, and other standards using suitable hardware specific drivers. The Ifi Zen DAC for example has analogue outputs but others such as Mtech Hiface just provides S/PDIF output via a BNC socket. They are sometimes described as external sound cards and the more expensive ones support output at high sample rates (e.g. 192KHz). Audio devices that have a direct USB input were often restricted to lower sampler rates but this is gradually improving.
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