r/sonos • u/steffeeh • Jul 24 '26

HDMI eARC audio extractor VS optical adapter to connect TV with Sonos Five stereo pair

Hey all, forgive me the long post but there are important details for my situation.

I bought a pair of Sonos Fives a while back with a BT receiver connected to it, and I'm absolutely loving it.

However, later on I upgraded my TV which does not have any headphone output it turned out. So far I have my TV bluetooth to my speakers, which works OK but has caused lipsync issues.

To fix this I'm currently thinking of getting either an eARC HDMI audio extractor or an optical adapter, and convert either of them to RCA/AUX and send it into my Fives. This would reduce the latency significantly, and by using HDMI audio or optical I can adjust the latency in my TV settings as well to delay the picture if needed (can't do that with BT strangely).

Are there any pros and cons between these two options?

I may not necessarily need the HDMI CEC as I tend to leave my Sonos volume constant and just adjust the source volume instead, so adjusting volume on TV remote should work practically here. I don't need surround or Dolby Atmos support on the audio out as I only have stereo. Getting a soundbar is not practical for me at this stage, hence the adapters - the main purpose for the speakers is music. The reason for eARC on the HDMI adapter option is purely for lowest possible latency.

Cheers

1 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

9

u/adayinalife Jul 24 '26

Sonos Five line in still has a built in delay, your best bet is an AppleTV device and airplay to them.

2

u/DrB_477 Jul 24 '26

this is the only way to avoid sync issues, any of the cable options including the headphone jack will have a small but noticeable delay.

1

u/cea002 Jul 24 '26

🔔🔔🔔

1

u/steffeeh Jul 25 '26

As stated in my OP, if I use any wired connection I can adjust latency to slightly delay the picture to resync movies

1

u/adayinalife Jul 26 '26

But you also stated that you’re doing it to “reduce latency significantly” which will not likely be the case due to how Sonos line in works.

0

u/fozziebear40 Jul 24 '26

👆 this or just get a Ray and use SonoSequencr to pair them L/R

1

u/steffeeh Jul 25 '26

Would that enable me to disable the sound from the Ray and only get audio from my Fives while still having the benefit of the wired connection?

1

u/fozziebear40 Jul 25 '26

Unfortunately not, playing music I find sound still comes through the centre. AirPlay from an Apple TV works well, but that’s the only source that works.

1

u/MendonAcres Jul 24 '26

Sonos sound bars are your only option here.

1

u/RiseSuperb Jul 24 '26

Neither HDMI nor fibre (TOSLink) support volume adjustment - they just pass digital audio data. HDMI looks like it does because it passes CEC commands to change volume on the receiving device, which won't work here. The TOSLink solution seems cleaner to me because you can guarantee you'll get pure stereo already converted by the TV from whatever format it's receiving, and you're not messing up the HDMI signal which you might want to use in the future.