HDMI ARC vs. Digital Optical (TosLink) | How to get the best sound

hdmi or digital optical both are one cable audio solutions for your home entertainment system but they work in different ways and one can do a few things the other can't so which should you use and how do you set it all up i've got the answers for you right now [Music] welcome back everyone i'm caleb dennison and while the digital optical audio connection is getting on in yours it's still around and in fact it might even be the better option for you even if hdmi arc is superior in several ways so let's talk about how these audio connections work which one you should use and how to get it all working by the way if you're new to this channel welcome to the community i'm glad you're here and if you like what you see be sure to subscribe so you can catch all our helpful how-tos and tech reviews and if you found this guide helpful would you do me a favor and click the like button so we can get help out to more people who have questions just like you thanks so much for your support okay let's get to it so the reason we're here talking about hdmi arc or arc versus digital optical is because both of these connections slash cables allow you to pass digital audio from point a to point b now for the sake of this video we're gonna assume that point a the source is your tv and point b the destination is an audio component like a sound bar av receiver or a set of powered speakers you want to get the sound from your tv to a bigger audio system so that could mean the sound from your tv's tuner and antenna or the tv's built-in apps or it could be the sound from anything connected to your tv like a game console streaming stick or maybe even a laserdisc player okay more likely a blu-ray player these days the point being in this setup your tv is your hub everything connects to your tv and you just want to get audio to a sound system and we have two popular options to do that digital optical and hdmi arc or arc for short the digital optical connection was developed back in the 80s so folks could get digital audio signals from laserdisc players or cd players to an av or stereo receiver thanks to the optical cable and its unique connector called the toslink connector digital surround sound was possible for the first time and i know because i was all about it back then anyway the cool thing about digital optical cables is that they don't use copper wires instead this connection uses a beam of red light that flashes on and off delivering a digital audio signal now the digital audio signal this optical cable uses is called spdif and by the way an optical cable isn't the only way to carry this signal some older tvs and even modern audio gear may have an rca jack marked spdif or coax so you can use an rca cable to carry the same signal it's that signal though that i want to focus on now because what it can and can't do is at the heart of what we're talking about here spinif can deliver uncompressed stereo two channel sound also known as pcm and it can carry compressed bitstreams surround sound audio with support for 5.1 or even up to 7.1 surround sound signals like dolby digital and dts spdif and thus your digital optical connection is limited though optical cannot do dolby digital plus let alone uncompressed dolby true hd or dtsx signals it just doesn't have enough bandwidth and that means that if you want dolby atmos or dtsx object-based surround sound you can't use the optical cable just to be super clear here you can get surround sound with optical up to 7.1 channels of dolby digital or basic dts but you cannot get enhanced surround formats like dolby digital plus dolby true hd or dtsx for all those you have to use hdmi also if you happen to be into formats like dvd audio or sacd i know i'm dating myself here but i still do you need hdmi for those as well now i think you'll hear folks talk about how digital optical is only capable of lossy compressed audio and that is technically true however that doesn't mean it sounds bad you can still get really good quality surround sound out of a digital optical connection so if that's your only option then use it in fact the new sonos ray soundbar that was just announced and you'll be seeing reviews for that coming soon it only offers an optical connection so this old connection is still getting used in new products today but if you want the best quality surround sound if you want dolby atmos or dtsx hdmi arc or e-arc is the way to go by the way i have a video explaining the difference between arc and e-arc right here if you want to go check that out also besides the enhanced sound quality using an hdmi cable allows you to take advantage of hdmi cec or consumer electronics control and that lets you change the volume of your soundbar or av receiver with the volume buttons on your tv remote turn everything in the system on or off at the same time with just one power button and some other clever tricks so if you have hdmi arc on your tv and your audio device my advice is to use that it's superior no doubt about it so how do you use these well it's pretty simple with optical just connect one end of the toslink cable to your tv and the other end into the optical input of your av receiver or sound bar with hdmi same thing connect one end of the cable to the hdmi port marked arc and the other end to the port marked arc on your audio device from there though you need to go into your tv's audio settings and check a few things for those of you using hdmi arc you might want to go make sure that hdmi cec is turned on in the tv if that's an option some systems won't turn arc on until you turn cec on and from there you want to go to your audio output settings and choose either hdmi arc or digital optical and for those of you using the optical connection you'll want to go one step further and choose either pcm or bitstream choose pcm if you have a two channel sound bar and choose bitstream if you have a surround sound sound bar that decodes dolby or dts so that it gets a legit surround sound signal and that's it hope this video was helpful and you walk away knowing a bit more about how to get your home entertainment system sounding and working its best thanks as always for watching everyone if you like this video let me know down below and here's two other videos i think you'll like

Channel: Digital Trends

Views: 960,206

Keywords: hdmi arc vs optical, digital optical vs hdmi, is hdmi arc better than optical?, hdmi vs optical audio, optical vs hdmi audio, digital optical audio cable, optical audio cable, optical audio setup, hdmi arc cable for soundbar, hdmi arc, optical cables, optical cable, hdmi arc vs earc, hdmi arc explained, hdmi arc setup, hdmi earc, what is arc, how to connect a soundbar, audio return channel, sound bar, best soundbar, home theater, dolby atmos

Id: Pe1EKFRL6iw

Length: 6min 31sec (391 seconds)

Published: Fri May 20 2022