[highwayinthesky]

God (e)ARC is awful. I’ve got a Sony OLED, which supports DTS:X and Atmos, and eARC, and a Samsung bar that also supports eARC, and yet neither object-based format will pass through correctly no matter what settings I tweak. Also for some bizarre reason Multichannel PCM from the PS5 gets really weird level anomalies when it’s set to 7.1, but 5.1 is fine. It does work with a Denon AVR with eARC, but unfortunately full speaker-based Atmos isn’t happening in the room I’ve got available.

tl;dr eARC is terrible, whether by the nature of the standard, or by inconsistent/broken implementation of the standard

[Glide]

For the stuff that matters, I had to connect to my receiver then to the TV. It doesn’t help that DTS isn’t supported by my TV (LG-CX). I have a Denon AVR as well.

So basically, almost everything goes through the receiver: nvidia shield, Blu-ray player. But then again, I paid through the nose for it.

It makes more sense to me that the sound capable device is better at figuring out the audio stuff. Which means the ports to a sound bar/receiver is a real consideration.

Haven’t figured out PC audio to my receiver though. I’ve basically given up.

[highwayinthesky]

Yeah that’s half the reason I went with Sony over LG, Sony still pays for a DTS license. My favorite part of this whole thing is how Atmos can be either Dolby Digital Plus with metadata, Dolby TrueHD with metadata, or Dolby MAT, which is just a PCM stream with metadata. The latter being what Xbox and Apple TV use.

Also yes, from what I’ve read trying to get PC audio into an AVR in any sort of predictable fashion will drive you to an asylum.

[flacebo]

> Haven’t figured out PC audio to my receiver though. I’ve basically given up.

While most motherboards do not have s/pdif connectors, most of them has pins on the board itself. Check out the manual of your mobo. If it has, you can use an s/pdif backplate, or a makeshift coax cable to hook it up to the receiver.

This is usually the best and cheapest way to get clear digital sound signal out of the PC case, and you can even pass through DTS and the likes.

[Avamander]

S/PDIF sucks all the asses out there due to terrible software support.

The source of the content you want to watch has to have support for it, the support has to actually work and it has to have a compatible audio track (or be able and willing to convert). Right now that means basically no streaming services or games, very select TVs actually output multichannel audio over S/PDIF.

(Gonna ignore the rare possibility that your sound card manufacturer has paid for the license to be able to transcode all audio)

[nitrogen]

For PC audio into an AVR I have a fake HDMI second screen set to clone the main monitor. Sometimes vsync chooses the HDMI port at 60Hz instead of my main monitor at 120Hz, but for the most part it works.