how to get the best performance from soundbar

nishe11

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Dec 26, 2015
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So ive bought a soundbar recently (first time buyer), but im quite a perfectionist and want the product to be functioning the best it possibly can, and ive had a few problems in doing so.

So to start my soundbar has 1 hdmi in and 1 ARC out, my tv has 3 hdmi connections but no hdmi ARC. As i dont have an arc connnection ive been using an optional connection from soundbar to tv. My blu ray player has 1 hdmi and optical conncetion.

Ive watched several blu ray movies on the soundbar and they've sounded good so far, but today i tried one and the volume sounded very tiny (had to turn upto 40 and still wasnt great, normally on 20 is better). This lead me to wonder why, so i looked at my current blu ray, tv and soundbar audio settings. And here is where ive been confused. I looked at the back of the film and it says Dolby trueHD and Dolby digital, then looked at my blu ray player- it supports dts-HD master audio and Dolby truHD. From this i looked at the blu ray player settings and noticed that the audio output was dolby instad of PCM (which i've heard is better), also it was set to surround instead of stereo. Do these different settings make any difference to the audio quality from my soundbar?

Also i've read from several forums aswell that hdmi connection is better audio quality over optical, is there anyother way of connecting hdmi's in my scenario?

My last question is when playing the blu ray film today i out of fustration changed settings of the disc from truHD to 5.1 channel. And it sounded much better again (sadly it was audio described so i couldn't use it!). So will my soundbar be able to use ths feature on other films or will it just damage it (since its only 2.1 channel)?

Cheers
 

jjbomber

Well-known member
nishe11 said:
As i dont have an arc connnection ive been using an optional connection from soundbar to tv.

Bit confused as to why you want to send sound from the soundbar to the TV? Also, can you let us know what make and model the various components are. Then BigBoss will be along with expert advice!
 
Which TV is it?

Optical cannot carry HD audio, only HDMI can. This is where it gets tricky for you, if you want HD audio.

Your only option currently that I can see is connecting your blu ray player to TV via HDMI and TV to soundbar via optical.

If you want HD audio, you have 2 options:

1) Upgrade your TV to a model which supports ARC.

2) Upgrade your blu ray player to one with twin HDMI outs so you can send audio to the soundbar and video to TV. In your system, your blu ray player will be the only source of HD audio anyway.
 

nishe11

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Ok thanks for the advice, tv is an old samsung LE40C530F1W.

I've got another samsung up the stairs UE46F6670, its has ARC functions, so connecting my blu ray player direct to tv HDMI connection and soundbar to tv via ARC connection would give HD audio? And in that case where would i change the audio settings from (to PCM) i.e. TV or blu ray player?

cheers
 

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