I am at my whits end and I am hoping someone has any suggestions before I throw this thing against the wall. =) I am running a Samsung H5500W through an Optical Cable from the receiver to the TV. I have multiple devices that all work flawlessly with my surround. The new ATV4 refuses to output anything from my back speakers unless I specifically set it to Dolby Surround. I'd be fine with that but unfortunately anything without dolby is silent. I've spoken with support and have been escalated all the way to engineering and no one has any ideas. Engineering seems to think my television is the culprit but they've no ideas to "what" to blame on my TV. (It too is a Samsung) Has anyone else experienced any similar issues? Any suggestions on getting surround to function? Am I just SOL? I rather not go back to the 3 but at least that has an Optical!
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ATV4 Surround Sound Help!
- Thread starter Calismic
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I have the same issue with the ATV3 and a Sharp Aquos. My theory has always been that the Sharp does not accept Dolby Surround on the HDMI interface and that this is detected as part of feature negotiation with the Apple TV, so the Apple TV falls back to stereo/PCM.
My solution was to force Dolby Surround and use the optical interface. As I own multiple ATV3s using this mechanism, I don't see any ATV4s in my future.
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You can use something like this to extract the audio from HDMI and get an optical connection.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BIQER0E?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00
I'm using this and with my ATV4 audio set to 'Dolby Surround' it's working great. My Samsung TV also would not pass thru 5.1.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BIQER0E?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00
I'm using this and with my ATV4 audio set to 'Dolby Surround' it's working great. My Samsung TV also would not pass thru 5.1.
I've said this elsewhere before, but Apple desperately needs to offer a simple passthrough option under Audio preferences. If the device could simply pass through whatever it is getting from the source file, we could use the device of our choice to decode the signal. That would solve a large number of the audio issues people have raised.
Many, many TVs will not pass through 5.1 from their HDMI input to their optical output. Probably the majority of TVs won't do this. There are even multi-thousand dollar TVs that don't do this.
The proper setup for a home theater with a receiver is to have all "source" devices output to the receiver via the receiver's HDMI IN. The surround audio is decoded right in the receiver as it should, and then the video sent via HDMI OUT to the TV.
What it sounds like you are doing is connecting the sources to the TV, then routing the audio back out of the TV to the receiver via optical, which is not right. For one thing, a lot of audio codecs can't even be transmitted over optical, but can over HDMI. The main purpose for the optical audio out on the TV is for surround sound from the TV's digital HDTV tuner.
If you hook the ATV up to the receiver by HDMI IN, then everything should work fine.
The proper setup for a home theater with a receiver is to have all "source" devices output to the receiver via the receiver's HDMI IN. The surround audio is decoded right in the receiver as it should, and then the video sent via HDMI OUT to the TV.
What it sounds like you are doing is connecting the sources to the TV, then routing the audio back out of the TV to the receiver via optical, which is not right. For one thing, a lot of audio codecs can't even be transmitted over optical, but can over HDMI. The main purpose for the optical audio out on the TV is for surround sound from the TV's digital HDTV tuner.
If you hook the ATV up to the receiver by HDMI IN, then everything should work fine.
Hah! I am right there with you! The Samsung receiver does not have any inputs which is why everything is spouting through the television.Great, now I have to go buy a new reciever.
Agree with this, in addition the bandwidth of Optical is significantly less than what HDMI is capable of. DD+ for example is typically not supported on Optical for this reason.
That is why I never recommend those DVD/Blu-Ray player/AVR all in ones. They tend to lack inputs for hooking up other devices.
I have the same TV and set up Running all my devices into the TV optical out to receiver. I don't think I've had a problem with the surround working I will check tonight when I get home. if you want direct message me and we could Skype or FaceTime and go through the problems. I have a Onkyo receiver running.
Does your receiver have HDMI in? My tv is hooked to the receiver through HDMI and passes Audi via audio return channel built into HDMI. Look for a port on your tv labels ARC (usually HDMI 1) and configure your tv sound output accordingly.
If not buy a cheap audio extractor with optical out.
If not buy a cheap audio extractor with optical out.
Wait a minute, all of your other source devices are also hooked via HDMI into the TV, then have their audio only going to the amp through optical from the TV? And they have surround? That would seem to indicate that your TV indeed does pass the 5.1 through out (rare feature), but just does not for the ATV4.
But honestly I don't understand how that could be. Devices like a Blu-Ray are going to have high resolution audio formats that won't even "fit" in the bandwidth of an optical cable, so you wouldn't hear surround unless you were manually selecting an appropriate "lesser" audio track for every disc, every time.
My guess is the TV is sending out a 2 channel stereo signal and his amp/soundbar are using something like Dolby Pro-Logic to simulate surround sound.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-put-your-surround-sound-to-the-test.1946908/
have you seen this forum page???
have you seen this forum page???