Getting the best sound from your surround sound.

Back when our entertainment sources were Sky TV Decoders, Blu-ray Players and Apple TV’s, the HDMI cable brought the video and audio signal to the AV Receiver to be turned into surround sound.

Fast forward 15 years and most of us are watching Netflix, Neon, Amazon and other streaming services on our Smart TV’s, but have you noticed that the sound is not as good as it used to be?

The reason for this, is that when your TV is the source, you need to pass the audio signal back to the AV Receiver, and this uses a protocol called “Audio Return Channel” – this is great, however it can only handle a basic and compressed surround signal.

Enter eARC.

‘Enhanced Audio Return Channel’ allows uncompressed 5.1, 7.1 and object oriented surround formats like Dolby Atmos.  The great news is, that to update to eARC, all you need to do is upgrade your HDMI cable to an Ultra High Speed “HDM 2.1” version.

By doing this, your video resolution will go up from 1K to 4K and 8K and bring in High Dynamic Range Video (HDR).

The biggest benefit will be seen by people who love to play video games.  Gamers prefer to connect their consoles directly to the TV to reduce the delay introduced by the AVR.  If the HDMI cable feeding the TV is older, it is likely that features in consoles such as the PlayStation 5 and XBOX X, like HDR Tone Mapping, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos for example, offered in the games simply wont be available in the room.  Happily, the solution, as above – just upgrade the cable.

If you would like to chat about your surround system or get your system upgraded, get in touch with us today.

Simplify Life.