I need help with my sound bar!

[gilrobsd]

Hey everyone! I just have a quick question about how I should hook my sound bar up to my tv. 
 

So I recently moved into my first apartment, and upon doing so went out and bought a new Sony Tv, along with a Sony sound bar. That being said, I’m not sure how I should hook it up to the tv… I use an Apple TV 4k so I can stream cable, Netflix, etc. because I don’t like the Google Os that’s installed on the tv. So here is my question. 
 

Currently, I have my Apple TV connected to my hdmi arc for video, then the sound bar plugged into one of the other hdmi ports, along with optical audio hooked up from the sound bar to the tv as well. I know that I don’t need the sound bar hooked up to two connections at once, but which connection is best? This is very hard for me to explain in text, so I hope it’s not super confusing for you all lol. 

[Kilrah]

The ARC connection is for sending audio from the TV back to the device connected there, so that's where you want the soundbar connected.

[gilrobsd]

21 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

The ARC connection is for sending audio from the TV back to the device connected there, so that's where you want the soundbar connected.

So I should do Sound bar to ARC, then Apple TV to hdmi? Or Apple TV to hdmi and sound bar to optical audio? Is arc better than optical audio or vice versa? 

[Kilrah]

6 minutes ago, gilrobsd said:

So I should do Sound bar to ARC, then Apple TV to hdmi?

This.

 

6 minutes ago, gilrobsd said:

Is arc better than optical audio

Yep.

[Stormseeker9]

18 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

 

 

Yep.

Thanks for clearing that up, I thought optical was better!

[dalekphalm]

On 11/12/2022 at 8:12 AM, Stormseeker9 said:

Thanks for clearing that up, I thought optical was better!

Optical is an ancient standard from back in the late 80s/90s - it hasn't been updated since.

 

Optical has limited bandwidth, and only supports the old DVD Standards for surround sound: DTS and DD up to 7.1, with limited bandwidth. It cannot support the newer HD Audio standards (No DTS-HD MA or Dolby TrueHD, No Atmos, etc).

 

HDMI Audio is always better, when you can use it.

 

You can either connect the Apple TV to the Soundbar itself, if it has HDMI inputs, or as mentioned, to another HDMI Port on the TV, with the ARC port going from the TV to the Soundbar.