Got a soundbar that supports HDMI ARC or optical audio. Optical audio requires I control with its remote but I’d rather only use the TV remote but all of my videos are encoded AAC which HDMI ARC doesn’t support. Is there a way to do a device specific custom profile to transcode audio to DTS for example?

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[–] Catsrules@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

videos are encoded AAC which HDMI ARC doesn’t support.

Are you sure HDMI ARC doesn't support that? It has been along time since I looked into this but It is my understanding HDMI ARC supports whatever Optical S/PDIF supports and more as it has a higher Audio bandwidth. Basically you would almost always pick HDMI ARC over Optical unless you had some very specific cases like long distances cable runs or lack of physical connections for example.

[–] notfromhere@lemmy.one 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

My TV must be doing the conversion because optical audio is surround sound but HDMI ARC is stereo and it sounds terrible because it must be passing through only a couple channels. Maybe the spec supports it but the soundbar only supports DTS/AC3 and maybe it’s just the TV combo that is not allowing it to work correctly. I was reading up on the HDMI ARC spec and it sounded like AAC was not supported until ARC 2?

[–] mmmmmsoup@lemmy.today 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I have an HDMI ARC surround setup also, and it doesn’t support eARC. It will do DTS/DolbyDigital+ surround but will only do PCM stereo, and my TV stupidly doesn’t support DTS. I use an Apple TV which converts everything surround to DD+ (but leaves stereo PCM lossless) and that works well enough for me

Eventually I plan to upgrade to an eARC setup that supports PCM surround pass through, and then quality should be better without conversion and my Nintendo will finally do surround

[–] notfromhere@lemmy.one 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Under my TV’s audio digital output format selection it says “select pass through to hear unmodified dolby or dts audio using ARC. If dolby or dts passthrough is not possible, you’ll hear stereo.” It lets me choose custom but can’t get it to use the AAC surround unless I use optical.

[–] mmmmmsoup@lemmy.today 1 points 11 months ago

That makes sense, the TV won’t convert it for you only pass through what it can. You would either need to convert the AAC to AC3 so it can pass through properly, or use a set-top-box that can force/convert it on the fly