I have optical out on both, although both are unused at the moment.
TV feed is via an aerial in the loft and wifi.
My Blu-Ray player is connected via HDMI into the TV, my logic was to leave the player connected to the TV and take the feed out of the TV to the 222 via the optical ports on each unit. My assumption was that this would work just fine?
There are no set top boxes or games machines to connect as we don’t have any, Netflix and Disney are our only additions and they are via apps on the TV.
NSC222 has two optical inputs. Assuming your B-Ray player has both HDMI out and optical out, keep HDMI connection as is (to tv), run a second optic cable to NSC222 for B-Ray, which as @Ian2001 pointed out, is likely to be better than via tv. A separate optic cable from tv is required for the tv apps.
If you use the digital audio output from the TV, all audio, regardless of source will be output via optical cable.
May be helpful to assign audio output to optical in the LG TV menu. It can also help to select PCM as the output standard. Perhaps disable the built in TV speakers while you’re at it.
This is probably lower SQ theoretically than dedicated feed from Blu-ray , but no input switching required. I find this makes things easier for other, not so geeky household members or visitors
I haven’t played with this, using my own Apple TV output through my TV to my Nova.
In theory 1, when all system deliver digital data to the TV, and the TV relays it to the streamer/DAC (ideally as “pass-through”), it should not matter, when the data comes from other/different sources. Different systems might convert multi-channel/surround audio differently to stereo, but you could play with which system does the conversion to stereo/PCM: either (only) the TV, or also set this at every source device feeding the TV.
Ideally, when running through the TV, you don’t need to change input on the streamer (as already mentioned) and you’ll have the same audio/picture synchronization (or not: can be tweaked a bit on the streamer input settings).
Now what could happen in theory 2 is, that something gets changed in the digital audio flow. E.g. the TV does some “enhancements” (from delay to all the fancy “make voices more audible” or “lower dynamics”, …), and/or rates on the digital links don’t match (say, 48/44.1 kHz) and get (loss-fully) converted along the way.
Then, a direct connection from each source to the streamer might be a way to work around it.
Some other scenarios won’t apply here, since the Naim devices anyway only take stereo/PCM. (So it does not matter for example, if the TV limits bandwidth or codecs between a Bluray source and an Atmos receiver/amplifier.)
Pragmatic suggestion: just connect the TV.
If there’s any doubt or you feel like experimentation, you can also try directly connecting the other sources with the same cable. If you notice improvements worth while the effort, get more cables.
Thanks everyone, I have an optical cable on order which should arrive on Wednesday, I’ll start with just the one connection from TV to 222, I’ll check the LG’s settings to ensure that audio is optical out, then see what happens and how things work out.
Make sure that the BluRay output is set to two channels, there has been more than one baffled user trying to put multichannel into stereo to find it doesn’t work
The cable suggested by @Mike-B arrived this afternoon, connecting up was a doddle, set the TV to wired connection/optical and amended the digital input on the 222 so that it reads TV BluRay
As the BluRay player is connected to the TV via HDMI there was no need to adjust any settings on the player.
On playing Skyfall the sound is superb, an absolute revelation, I can see that the 222 is going to get a lot of work in the months and years ahead.
We use the same arrangement, with the TV connected via optical to our Qutest DAC. The results are superb. We watch verything like this, the Bu ray player and Apple box being connected to the TV via HDMI.
If your TV is located between your stereo speakers it really is a no-brainer. You won’t get any fancy surround or pseudo surround effects of course but you’ll get high quality stereo that will comprehensively destroy any soundbar at any price. That to me is far preferable. Those who get a kick out of hearing sounds coming from over here or over there may disagree.
Conventional wisdom would say to keep the cable runs and connections to a minimum.
Based on that I would also run an optical cable from the Bluray Player straight to your 222 to get the optimum sound quality when playing discs on your Bluray Player.
If you get another £16 cable it costs very little to do it and you will probably get slightly better sound quality., however, I would get a much better optical cable for the Bluray Player to maximise the sound quality improvement.