HDMI ARC and eARC - Everything You Need to Know!

Check out my Sonos Arc Review:

HDMI ARC and eARC are very common terms in regards to home audio. ARC stands for audio return channel. It basically sends audio in the "opposite" direction down an HDMI cable.

However, HDMI ARC is very limited in the amount of data that it can transfer. For high quality and complex audio systems, it has to compress the audio signals in order to transfer them completely.

HDMI eARC fixed this by increasing the amount of data that it can transfer tremendously!

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to us.

[hby]

You earned a sub for being honest, humble, and correcting your mistakes. This adds to the transparency of any misinformation you might have put out. Shows integrity, who, and what your channels is about.

[koolk]

The detail of your presentations are not only interesting due to a passion for tech, but extremely educational. I've made solid purchases thanks to your in depth reviews and audio expertise. Yourself, Vincent and Caleb are outstanding for Audio and Visual enthusiasts.

[IvanRossS]

I been using optic cable for the pass 8 years lol and just not to long ago I find out that optic doesn't pass Dolby and DTS.... just basic 5.1 channel. I was happy to find out that my 8 years old Onkyo AV supported ARC all this time lol. So I reconnected with new HDMI and turn ARC on !! And OMG what a difference!!! Its sounds so much clearer, more effects, more details. Just WOW!! I've been missing alot

[dankelley]

Great descriptive differences of EARC & ARC. Good to know that you no longer need the CEC part to control the system!

[andoniades]

I'm subbing because you were honest with your mistake.

Honesty goes a long way young man. Thank you.

[Methodical]

I'm in the market for an eARC AVR now. My TV (LG C9) recently had a firmware update to support eARC. I want all of the sounds available, haha. Thanks for not getting too technical.

[iball]

Such haven't seen anybody like this for a while now ....Love from mate..👍🏼keep up the good work

[manupawankalyan]

Liked just for the sincerity you showed

[richardpells]

This is the best explanation I have come across. I really like Chris Majestic and Caleb Dennison, but this video did it for me and has been a great help. I have to explain this stuff as part of my job so I'm very grateful for your help and advice. Thanks Jonah!

[hj]

Humble pie prevents dementia . Good video .

[safialmamun]

I saw your previous video. We learn from out mistakes :-) Appreciate your honesty and you deserve 💯 any my subscription, best of luck with your journey in YouTube

[danenpauly]

Great video man. You're really able to present this confusing information in a digestible manner. Just a recommendation though, if you are intending this to be as informative as possible then I would mention somewhere that if people are planning on upgrading from ARC to eARC then they WILL need to upgrade their HDMI cable as well. I just know so many people won't know to do this and then be utterly lost.

[melodychest]

Good info. I think with the advancement in TV displays with OLED, QLED, in 4K, 8K and AI upscaling and what not, I think it makes more sense to plug everything straight into the TV and just have one eARC HDMI connection to an external audio driver like a sound bar or AV receiver. When you run out of HDMI channels on the TV, then we can start using the HDMI ports on the external devices to go up the same eARC bandwidth. For AV Receiver lovers like me, eARC is still not common in them unless you get a flagship model at this point which is a bummer. They should really make eARC more commonly available on AV Receivers. Cheers.

[zersIx]

Thank you for this. As i have seen your old video first. Good thing you have an update. Really help me decide on what soundbar to get.

[arfenmalik]

I have a Sony TV and it has two HDMI ports one in the back that is also labeled HDMI Arc while there is also another port on the side but it is not labeled arc.
The port in the back is working well no problems at all but since i have mounted the TV i cannot use it so i have to use the port on the side but after every 30secs the screen goes black and immediately comes back. It's irritating
What is the problem

[jayakumarramachandran]

You are doing a professional work. Learnt from you the power of honesty . Thanks

[Nethanel]

Thank you so much for putting this up! The ARC turned out to be the key/fault I ended up working through to restore HDMI output from my laptop > Yamaha > speakers.

[ffuentes]

Kudos for correct a previous mistake and putting together a correction video

[acts]

If you're using a fairly modern audio receiver (Denon, Yamaha, etc.) you can overcome a lot of e-ARC issues by simply plugging your devices into the receiver, which will then handle the audio processing, instead of the TV.

I.E. I plug my FireStick into a port on my receiver not a port on the TV. Then if the source the FireStick is pulling from has an audio format like ATMOS or DTS: X the receiver, not the TV processes the audio and video sending the video to the TV and the audio directly to my 5.1.2 surround speakers. I use this for all kinds of things including streaming services and my EMBY home server system.

If I set the DSP on my Yamaha receiver to "Auto" then I get whatever format the signal is capable of producing though I may have to go into the controls on whatever video source is playing and select say "ATMOS" instead of 5.1.

[davidtsmith]

I have a TV, Receiver, Soundbar, Playstation console, and Headphones with base station.
Question is: What is the procedure for setting them up. Which cables go to which devices?

Currently I have the TV's HDMI ARC connected directly to the Receiver's HDMI ARC port, but the Soundbar is connected to the TV via it's optical port and so is the headphone's base station optical to TV's optical via a splitter.