I just got a new old receiver. A pioneer, 15-20 years old, has 5.1 and Dolby Pro Logic 1 and 2. It is working great for music and I can also send A/V from the computer to the TV and to L/R tower speakers. I do not have a center speaker and have no room for one, have been using a soundbar, connected with optical audio to the TV. It sounds OK but not great. Now I am sending the HDMI from the computer to the amp, and the amp HDMI output goes to TV. Sounds great but no center speaker
The receiver does not have optical out. What I would like to do is get an HDMI splitter and an HDMI to optical converter. One HDMI cable will go to amp and then HDMI out to TV, as I am now doing, and the other HDMI would go to the converter and then optical out to sound bar
This device supposedly can do this, but I’m just wondering if it will work with this complicated setup with a splitter. I could of course order one and try it and if it doesn’t work send it back, but it was not at all easy to get my current setup to work with the old amp, had to try many different combinations of input and output settings on the computer and TV - for audio it has ARC, EARC, Dolby, and passthrough - and only one of those combinations worked. I felt like Andy in The Detectorists who could not get the sequence of 3 remotes right, don’t want to go through that again
It’s normal to get delay in s/PDIF and in HDMI. I expect that at least one place in your system will be able to adjust delay, but if that’s already the slow leg it won’t help.
Got a bigger problem now. Computer no longer recognizes the HDMI from computer to the amp (which is what I use to play music) when the HDMI out from amp to TV is plugged in. If I unplug that, then the HDMI to amp shows in the list of sound devices. It is called EP-HDMI-RX. Intel device. This is what happened the other day, but eventually it would just show up in the list. The first time I just quickly pulled the HDMI out to TV out for just a second and plugged it back in. EP-HDMI-RX was still in the list.
I just disconnected HDMI to TV and EP-HDMI-RX shows up, the instant I plug HDMI to TV in, it goes away. No idea how it worked until now
It sounds to me like you need an optical audio splitter. Run optical audio out of the TV to the splitter and then one line goes to the receiver and one to the soundbar.
For the computer, I’d connect via HDMI to the TV and then run a separate audio line directly to the receiver. That way, if you just want to listen to music via the computer you don’t have to pass through the TV. Music only will not be on the soundbar, but you said that it sucks anyway.
You are right. I have over-complicated it. Right now HDMI from computer to receiver and then TV is not working well or at all. But I also need an HDMI splitter. One goes directly into amp and there is music. I will sometimes want to listen to music while having TV on, a baseball game for example. If am just watching video, splitted optical to soundbar