Your TV could be ruining your perfect speakers ‣ Diverse Daily

I think that for most people, the audio support on their smart TV is an afterthought. From one angle, it stands to reason — it’s your speakers pumping out the sound, and it’s the movie, show, or game that’s supposed to dictate the formats available. Your TV’s main job is video, allowing audio to pump through unobstructed. Right?

Well, no. Your TV’s codec compatibility is actually extremely important, to the point that it could be diminishing everything you’ve paid for, including that expensive soundbar and that premium streaming plan with spatial audio. There are a variety of ways in which this interference can happen, though there may also be settings you can change to fix things.

Talking at cross purposes

The common compatibility issues

The TCL Q85H soundbar in a living room with illustrated sound cones.

One of the most fundamental barriers you’re likely to encounter is spatial audio support. If your TV’s HDMI ports only offer ARC instead of eARC, any HDMI-based speaker or receiver you plug in will only be able to receive the compressed (a.k.a. lossy) versions of Dolby Atmos or DTS:X. That’s not necessarily a big deal, since most streaming services rely on compressed audio anyway. If you’re trying to watch a Blu-ray disc, however, you won’t be getting the best possible audio quality, no matter how good your speakers are. ARC simply doesn’t have enough bandwidth to handle lossless formats like Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio, even if it’s in stereo or non-spatial surround.

Speaking of DTS, that format’s popularity has waned to the point that your TV may not only lack native decoding, but even passthrough, which shifts the decoding burden to a speaker or receiver. Some companies may not feel the licensing fee is worth it, especially if they’re already paying Dolby for dominant formats like Atmos. Check your TV’s official specs. If DTS passthrough isn’t available, there’s not much you can do in this situation except default to another standard, buy a media streamer (see below), or replace your TV. In fact, LG recently removed DTS support from some TVs that previously had it, so the situation is only getting worse.

As a side note, remember that your TV’s optical/TOSLINK/S-PDIF port is intrinsically limited. While it can tackle 5.1-channel surround, it can’t handle any form of spatial audio, let alone lossless codecs. Moreover, optical speakers don’t support CEC, which means their power and volume can’t be automatically controlled by your TV remote. You have to use a separate remote, or else “train” a speaker on your primary one.

Things get even more complicated with wireless speakers. Some smart speakers simply won’t connect to a TV unless they share the same platform, the chief example being Amazon’s Echo lineup, which requires a TV or media streamer with the company’s Fire TV OS. Even then, you’re limited to two identical main speakers and an Echo Sub — you can’t link an Echo Studio with an Echo 4. Apple’s HomePods won’t work at all unless they’re paired through an Apple TV 4K, which might seem odd considering how many TVs now support AirPlay and HomeKit.

You should generally avoid Bluetooth speakers for a TV. But if you insist, it’s essential that both they and your TV support one of the few low-latency codecs available, including Bluetooth LE Audio (LC3), aptX Adaptive, or LG’s Bluetooth ULL (Ultra-Low Latency). Without one of these, lag will be so high that effects and dialogue will be noticeably out of sync. When it is in sync, don’t expect to be floored by the quality. You can’t get authentic spatial audio out of Bluetooth, never mind lossless.

Are there any workarounds to codec incompatibility?

Sometimes, but don’t count on it

Changing Netflix audio settings on a TV.

There are a few ways to deal with this, the easiest being bitstream/passthrough. If you can find an option for it in Settings, your TV will try to deliver untouched data to your speaker system so it can be decoded there. Indeed this may be the only way to get Dolby Atmos out of some soundbars, so search for this option first if you’re expecting spatial audio but getting underwhelming results.

Another option may be switching to PCM, short for Pulse Code Modulation. You can think of PCM as a “raw” format, a universal language that any speaker should understand. There’s a big catch here, though, which is that you’ll be limited to 5.1- or 7.1-channel surround over eARC, and likely vanilla stereo over ARC or optical. 5.1-channel surround is better than nothing. It might not be Atmos or DTS:X, but it’s not like home viewers in the 1980s were wailing and gnashing their teeth because The Empire Strikes Back didn’t have TIE Fighters roaring overhead.

A potentially complicated fix involves bypassing your TV with an add-on media streamer. In one approach, the media player is plugged directly into a soundbar or receiver’s HDMI input, and the latter device is connected back to your TV via an HDMI output cable. You can see where this might get tricky — the media streamer has to support the codec you’re worried about, and any soundbar needs to have an output port. Keep the differences between ARC and eARC in mind, too. No matter how advanced it is, a streamer can’t force anything through your TV’s ARC port (or HDMI 2.0 cables) if it would normally require eARC.

Another tactic may be pairing wireless speakers directly with a media streamer. As you’ve no doubt gathered from the last section, this generally only works if a streamer and your speakers share the same platform — Fire TV devices can only be linked with Echo speakers, and Roku devices only support Roku speakers. Ironically, Apple now offers more flexibility here. While the Apple TV 4K used to be limited to HomePods, you can now set any AirPlay-compatible speaker as a default audio output. I’d still recommend a pair of full-size HomePods if you want to guarantee Atmos output with minimal lag.

Is there any hope for universal audio?

Some final thoughts

A 2nd generation Apple HomePod in white.

It’s not likely anytime soon, and the core issue is content. So many movies and TV shows are mixed for either Dolby or DTS standards that introducing a new, universal format would require a massive remixing effort from studios. Even if there were some easy way of converting existing mixes, it would take years to rummage through back catalogs, and the studios (plus the format’s creator) would still need to put pressure on streaming services and hardware makers to offer compatibility going forward. Backwards compatibility would likely be impossible.

The closest thing we have to something universal (beyond PCM) is Eclipsa Audio. It’s an open-source, royalty-free standard created by Google and Samsung, the latter presumably trying to further shrink its payments to Dolby — it even refuses to support Dolby Vision. The technology is so new that it’s mostly reserved for the latest Samsung and LG TVs, and the only announced audio gear partners are all Samsung sub-brands like JBL and Harman Kardon. It remains to be seen if Eclipsa will gain any traction beyond Google and Samsung products. Also, hardware compatibility hardly matters if you can’t hear it when you’re watching a mainstream service like Netflix or Disney+.