HDMI ARC vs Digital Optical: Which is Better and Why?

there's a lot of confusion regarding hdmi arc and digital optical there's so much misinformation out there that it's easy for people to get torn on which they should use so i want to shed a little bit of light on this topic today what's up guys jonah mathis here my channel is all about sound bars home entertainment setups home tech and more i try to break down complex topics into terms that most people can easily understand so first let's discuss what each of these are and how they work hdmi arc and digital optical both transmit digital signals hdmi arc i like to call it hdmi arc for short stands for audio return channel most tvs nowadays have a few hdmi inputs and one will typically be labeled as arc if you have a very new fancier tv then you might even have e-arc or enhanced audio return channel which is even better than arc we aren't going to go into er too much in this video i have a completely separate video on that anyways hdmi arc works by sending the audio signal from your tv to an arc compatible sound bar or audio video receiver so whether you are playing netflix or anything on a smart tv or playing something from a fire tv apple tv blu-ray player etc the audio signal will still be sent back to the device connected to the arc port as long as it's compatible it's good to note that you may need to enable cec on your tv in order for arc to work properly digital optical is much more simple connect one end from your tv or media device and the other end to your sound bar or audio video receiver and that's it the audio that is being played will then pass to the connected sound bar or receiver now here's a little bit of background information on digital optical it was actually introduced back in the 1980s and used to connect cd players to receivers believe it or not digital optical actually uses light to send data it's not made of copper wire like most hdmi cables are this is why you can see light coming out of its end digital optical cables use toslink connectors this is why you may see a digital optical cable labeled as a toslink cable they are basically the same thing okay so now that we've clarified what both of these are let's talk about the limitations of each starting with digital optical it's capable of sending two channels of uncompressed pcm audio or up to 5.1 channel compressed audio stream through the adobe digital or dts digital surround audio codecs let's break that statement down a little bit two channels of uncompressed pcm audio might come from a blu-ray player where it's decoding the audio by itself or possibly an apple tv 4k 5.1 channels adobe digital audio can come from basically any smart tv app or modern media streamer so an nvidia shield tv fire tv roku etc this also includes blu-ray players by the way now hdmi arc is capable of a little more than this plus it has some additional features that digital optical does not have like cec it has been very difficult to get clear definitive capabilities of hdmi arc because many of the major sources that talk about it all have different information coming directly from dolby hdmi arc is fully capable of supporting dolby digital plus which supports up to a 7.1 channel compressed audio stream and includes adobe atmos as well so if you have a soundbar with adobe atmos support or an av receiver with high channel speakers connected then theoretically these channels are supported through hdmi arc now here's the confusing part many tvs manufactured before 2018 may not support dolby digital plus over hdmi arc dolby digital plus was added much later on after arc was first introduced when arc was first introduced some tvs only supported two channels of audio and most others supported 5.1 channels just like digital optical cables the best way that i've found to figure this out is to find the spec sheet or manual for your tv and see what audio codecs that it natively supports however this information isn't always included or easily accessible all right let's go over the limitations of each again so that it's super clear digital optical supports up to 5.1 channels of audio with adobe digital or dts digital surround audio codecs hdmi arc for almost all tvs supports the same hdmi arc on most newer tvs made between 2018 and today may support up to 7.1 channels of audio including adobe atmos with the adobe digital plus audio codec so now that we're clear about this why should you use hdmi arc or digital optical does it really even matter for you of course use hdmi arc if you want to use cec this makes it so that your tv remote can control your soundbar or audio video receiver and vice versa if you have a 5.1 channel or less soundbar or surround sound system it really doesn't matter which one you use both are going to output a compressed audio stream that's exactly the same but if you have any upward firing or ceiling speakers that are set as height channels then you'll definitely want to use hdmi arc as digital optical will not support these height channels at all so if you have adobe atmos sound bar use hdmi arc never digital optical again even with hdmi arc you're still getting a compressed audio stream there's no way to send more than two channels of uncompressed audio through hdmi arc it's just not capable of it now if you have hdmi e arc then that's a completely different story just go watch my video on hdmi arc and it will explain everything you need to know about it but to keep it really short hdmi er supports both adobe true hd and dts hd master audio both of which offer more than 7.1 channels of uncompressed audio and 3d object-based effects which is adobe atmos and dtsx that's a lot to say i hope that makes sense i also want to clear up another bit of confusion about hdmi arc that's very important when you have a media device connected directly to a sound bar or av receiver with an hdmi cable you are not using hdmi arc to send the audio so all of these limitations that i just discussed do not apply when the media device is directly connected like this the only bottlenecks for audio quality are one what the media device is capable of playing to the source of the media so a blu-ray disc netflix hulu etc most video streaming services support up to dolby digital plus by the way and three the last bottleneck is the soundbar or av receiver itself naturally they will only play what they're capable of receiving i hope this clears up any confusions about both digital optical and hdmi arc if you learned something or found this video helpful i'd really appreciate it if you'd smash that like button as always i'll see you guys in the next one bye [Music]

Channel: Jonah Matthes

Views: 815,836

Rating: 4.9334784 out of 5

Keywords: soundbar, sound bar, tv, receiver, a/v receiver, projector, speakers, projector screen, HDMI, ARC, HDMI ARC, Digital Optical, TOSLINK

Id: cImOMABtLFI

Length: 6min 44sec (404 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021