getting my head around ARC - and a PC / soundbar issue

sunshinewelly · 23 Jun 2017 at 12:09

I own a KS7500 and a sony HTRT5 soundbar - soundbar is 4k compatible but not HDR compatible.

I have an alienwear gaming laptop gtx1070 (HDMI 2.0a) which is plugged into the TV (through the propierty samsung connect box) . I also have sky q.

Now becuase i like the ability to change picture settings on an individual HDMI basis i am using the TV arcs function to send the audio to the Sound Bar.

Sky works ok and suggets that the soundbar is picking up a 5.1 dolby digital input.

however on my pc - the soundbar says LPCM but on the PC i can only select a stereo set up. If i plug the pc into the bar directly i do get the option of a 5.1 set up etc.

does anyone know why arc is only giving me a stereo output.

TheMightyTen · 23 Jun 2017 at 12:28

ARC can only pass stereo LPCM there is not enough bandwidth for multi-channel LPCM.

sunshinewelly · 23 Jun 2017 at 12:46

can i get my laptop to output some other format however or am i stuck with LPCM

sunshinewelly · 23 Jun 2017 at 12:52

I assume that its the same thing if i use optical output from the connect box to the soundbar

TheMightyTen · 23 Jun 2017 at 14:16

sunshinewelly said:
can i get my laptop to output some other format however or am i stuck with LPCM

Generally no, in some cases you can "passthrough" AC3 and DTS signals but it generally depends on the software being used and the capabilities of the soundcard.

sunshinewelly said:
I assume that its the same thing if i use optical output from the connect box to the soundbar

ARC and optical have the same bandwidth issue. Any sound format that is not a compressed signal and decoded on the soundbar/receiver will be limited to stereo LPCM.