Will an eARC soundbar work with an ARC only TV

[mattl1598]

I'm planning on getting my parents a soundbar for their TV which is on the older side and only supports ARC not eARC. I was wondering if an eARC soundbar would be backwards compatible with an ARC source. 

 

All my googling has shown that an ARC sound bar will work on an eARC tv but I can't find any info on the otherway round.

[BiotechBen]

15 minutes ago, mattl1598 said:

I'm planning on getting my parents a soundbar for their TV which is on the older side and only supports ARC not eARC. I was wondering if an eARC soundbar would be backwards compatible with an ARC source. 

 

All my googling has shown that an ARC sound bar will work on an eARC tv but I can't find any info on the otherway round.

Arc/eArc is temperamental on its best day, optical would be the way to go. Tried eArc with my new TV and sound bar and the quality was meh, went to optical and it was night and day better. The Amazon Basics optical cable has Ben working great for me, just remember to take off the silicone covers.

[dalekphalm]

12 hours ago, BiotechBen said:

Arc/eArc is temperamental on its best day, optical would be the way to go. Tried eArc with my new TV and sound bar and the quality was meh, went to optical and it was night and day better. The Amazon Basics optical cable has Ben working great for me,

That's so bizarre. I know that Arc has always had it's issues, but the audio quality should blow away Optical (assuming all parts of the system can take advantage of the higher bitrate codecs) given the pretty limited bandwidth available to Optical.

 

Personally I've made it this far while avoiding having to use Arc at all, so I've been lucky in that regard.

12 hours ago, BiotechBen said:

just remember to take off the silicone covers.

Got damn this brings back memories of frustration. I had no idea there were covers when I was hooking up my old system via optical, and it took me forever to realize that was the case. And then on top of that, one of the covers (which I didn't remove) got stuck inside the optical port of my TV or Xbox or whatever device it was. Had to use some tweezers to fish the damn cover out of the port.

[BiotechBen]

3 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

That's so bizarre. I know that Arc has always had it's issues, but the audio quality should blow away Optical (assuming all parts of the system can take advantage of the higher bitrate codecs) given the pretty limited bandwidth available to Optical.

 

Personally I've made it this far while avoiding having to use Arc at all, so I've been lucky in that regard.

Got damn this brings back memories of frustration. I had no idea there were covers when I was hooking up my old system via optical, and it took me forever to realize that was the case. And then on top of that, one of the covers (which I didn't remove) got stuck inside the optical port of my TV or Xbox or whatever device it was. Had to use some tweezers to fish the damn cover out of the port.

I couldn't figure out why the optical plug worked fine on one sound bar but wouldn't fit into this set, and then saw the covers and did the corner of shame sit for a minute.

 

Until recently, I had never gotten optical to work reliably, it would detect for the initial setup, and then just randomly never work again.

[dalekphalm]

4 minutes ago, BiotechBen said:

I couldn't figure out why the optical plug worked fine on one sound bar but wouldn't fit into this set, and then saw the covers and did the corner of shame sit for a minute.

 

Until recently, I had never gotten optical to work reliably, it would detect for the initial setup, and then just randomly never work again.

I've had issued with optical converters dying randomly, but it seemed to work well enough otherwise.

 

I made the switch to HDMI audio when I bought my current Yamaha RX-V385 AV Receiver last year. No regrets. Supports all the major modern codecs (except for Atmos, since it's only a 5.1 receiver - and that's okay, I need to upgrade my current speakers way before I need to go beyond 5.1), the sound is great, and the interface works well enough. I also only turn the AV receiver on for movies and shows occasionally. Most of the time the TV speakers are just fine for daily usage.

[circeseye]

arc to earc "should" work.

problem is arc has always been temperamental.

earc is better but thats earc to earc

so expect having to rest the audio or turning something off then on again.

[sm1th5]

On 9/14/2022 at 6:55 PM, BiotechBen said:

Arc/eArc is temperamental on its best day, optical would be the way to go. Tried eArc with my new TV and sound bar and the quality was meh, went to optical and it was night and day better. The Amazon Basics optical cable has Ben working great for me, just remember to take off the silicone covers.

Completely disagree here. Optical has severely limited audio support while hdmi arc has Dolby digital plus which streaming services use all the time.

 

But yes arc and earc can be used together but you will only have ARC and never earc unless both devices support earc

 

Enjoy!

[BiotechBen]

12 hours ago, sm1th5 said:

Completely disagree here. Optical has severely limited audio support while hdmi arc has Dolby digital plus which streaming services use all the time.

 

But yes arc and earc can be used together but you will only have ARC and never earc unless both devices support earc

 

Enjoy!

Have yet to get arc/eArc to just work and to be reliable and sound great. I am by no means an audiophile, but the few times that I tried arc/eArc, it sounded nasally and way overdone on the V curve. 

[mattl1598]

On 9/15/2022 at 9:47 AM, sm1th5 said:

Completely disagree here. Optical has severely limited audio support while hdmi arc has Dolby digital plus which streaming services use all the time.

 

But yes arc and earc can be used together but you will only have ARC and never earc unless both devices support earc

 

Enjoy!

Thats what I thought and wanted to confirm. I was considering eARC so that the support would be there if the TV ever gets upgraded.

 

Thanks!