Topic: Gaming TVs, Soundbars, Headsets and Shelving

@NintendoDad
You don't need a game. On your Switch, go into the Settings > TV Settings > TV Sound and select Surround Sound. It will then ask to test the surround with 6 fuzz noises that come from center, left, right, side left, side right, and subwoofer.

Make sure you don't hear just two sounds. That means you're only getting 2 channel stereo. And make sure it's not just 6 sounds coming from the same two speakers. That's surround that's only playing through two speakers. Make sure all 6 sounds come from 6 separate speakers.

@NintendoDad
Keep in mind, I couldn't get surround to work with TV pass-through (I use eARC from TV to soundbar which works for PS5 and PC but not Switch or Wii U). I had to run HDMI directly into the soundbar and pass the video to the TV via eARC (since eARC is bi-directional).

But, you never know. Switch is temperamental with surround so it just depends on the system and the TV. You very well may get it to work. Worth a shot, anyways. And if not, you can always buy an HDMI audio extractor to splice the audio out of the HDMI running to TV and send it directly into the optical. That would almost certainly work. And they're cheap. Like $40 on Amazon for an easy solution. Just make sure it has optical out on the extractor.

@JaxonH,

+1 — Thanks!

Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. But, yes, as I was hooking all this up, I went through the Switch setup menu and I stumbled across that test. When I forced surround sound on, I only heard the sound twice. But when I did auto, I heard it 6 times, but only through the front speakers. And . . . on my JVC Amplifier, it only shows the front 2 speakers being used.

So along the path it is dropping down to only 2 channels.

Also, I was thinking about it. RE: HDMI extractor. Would I be better off going from HDMI to coaxial (instead of optical)? Would that make a better chance of getting surround sound to the JVC Amplifier?

Or is the 21+ year old amplifier just too old and won't understand the surround sound coming out of the Switch? Or can the extractor downgrade the surround sound to something my old JVC Amplifier would understand?

@NintendoDad
It's hard to say. I don't know much about old tech, but I do know Switch outputs surround as PCM 5.1, so theoretically it should receive the signal. I don't think it's your soundbar that's the issue but rather, Switch being finnicky with surround. I have a 2021 TV with 4 HDMI 2.1 ports and eARC, and a high end sound bar with HDMI 2.0 ports and eARC, and even still I had to route audio directly to the soundbar to get it to work. I haven't read a single report of someone getting pass through to work for Switch through a TV.

But I do know plenty of ppl use audio extractors for Switch. Maybe get one with coaxial and optical outs (if such an extractor exists) and try each. I don't think it would make a difference tbh. Optical should work fine. I'm convinced it's just the Switch not working with pass through. Extract and send directly to soundbar and you should be 100%

@NintendoDad
Here's one that's full 4k with multiple HDMI inputs so you could run multiple systems into it and splice the audio out via Optical. Only $25 too, and I've read at least one report of someone successfully using it with Switch.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JDGBBXF

And here's another one reported to work with Switch for $50 that has both Optical and Coaxial out.

https://smile.amazon.com/Monoprice-Blackbird-Switch-Toslink-E...

I'd maybe order both, and see which one works well, then return the other. You never know with different surround systems and system updates, etc whether something will still work today.

@JaxonH

Ok. So I ordered some sort of extractor.

Has HDMI IN / OUT, coaxial out, optical out, 3.5mm stereo out and a switch to switch between 2 channel, 5.1 channel and passthru. But . . . no HDMI Input switching.

There's a couple more uses I can get out of this, so I figured, OK, let's try this.

Hopefully it actually works. LOL.

But . . . if my HDMI TV is cutting the digital audio data down to 2 channels, or if the optical connector (with its limited bandwidth) is the culprit, then hopefully this adapter can help out.

1st by-pass the TV. And then try out both optical and coaxial into the surround sound amplifier.

But even if I don't get surround sound from the Switch, I still wanted to try to see if I could get surround sound from the HDMI connector going from my daughter's gaming PC to the surround sound system. We play Netflix and Disney+ through her PC to the TV / surround sound system. Netflix is supposed to have Dolby Digital Plus. So I am wondering if I can get that to work with my surround sound system.

And worst case scenario . . . if neither of those work, I'm going to use it to extract audio from the HDMI signal from my work PC. The audio out port doesn't work on my computer. The monitor's speakers aren't loud enough. And there is no 3.5mm out from the monitor. LOL. So worst case scenario is I get louder audio on my work computer.

Thanks for your help.

It will be interesting if this works! LOL.

@NintendoDad
Wow, hope it works! I think it will. It should, anyways. I watch Netflix and some shows have 5.1 surround, while others have Dolby Atmos. Unfortunately, you'll never be able to transmit Atmos without a TV or soundbar with eARC HDMI inputs. Too data heavy for optical. Best you'll get is 5.1 so make sure whatever show you're watching, you set it to English (5.1) in the show settings. When you click on the show and play it, whenever you pause you can toggle through the different options.

@JaxonH

I hear you on Dolby Atmos.

Thanks again for the help. I was reading about being able to change audio in Netflix, but hadn't gotten that far to figure that out yet. LOL.

For me, I think this is mostly an exercise to see how much I can squeeze out of this old (21+ year old) surround sound system.

If it is capable of doing surround from the Switch, and I didn't give it a go, I'd be kicking myself down the road. LOL.

Same thing with playing Netflix and Disney+ as well.

If it doesn't work, the 2 channel digital sound from the Switch is more than enough to play games with. And the haptic feedback of the controllers adds another dimension to playing as well. Almost like having .1 (subwoofers) in your hands.

@NintendoDad
For sure. And, you can always buy a new soundbar or even headphones if your budget allows. They both sound good. Tbh though, of all the video game platforms, I think headphones are best, since they all have virtual surround options using HRTF tech to simulate how you would hear objects at different positions and elevations... except Switch, of course. For Switch, I think 5.1 surround (for the games that support it anyways- not all do) is just as good as headphones.

So...the Switch has a bluetooth update. My 5.1 sound bar has bluetooth...no idea when I'll mess with this, but...will it work? Or are we still screwed? lol

EDIT: Yeah, saw Jaxon's reply on the article...so this update is pointless...as usual.

@Joeynator3000
I wouldn’t say it’s pointless. A lot of people apparently like it. I think the lag is unbearable and the quality is about as subpar as audio can get. But if it makes other people happy what’s the harm.

If you want surround just get an audio extractor like that other guy did. Run it into your soundbar directly. Or, skip the surround for gaming and get high quality wired headphones with a DAC/AMP to drive them.

An extractor/converter doesn't work, plugging it in directly requires more HDMI cables and an splitter for everything to work, and even then the audio cuts out whenever the speakers detect silence for a split second...and takes another second for the audio to activate again, it's highly annoying. lol

@Joeynator3000
Sounds like you just need a different extractor.

The one I linked to the guy above is easy and reportedly works for Switch. HDMI from Switch to extractor. HDMI from extractor to TV. And the extractor has audio out to your soundbar. If your soundbar has HDMI in, use that with an extractor that has HDMI out. If it has Optical, get one with optical out.

I’m fairly certain if you ordered 2 different extractors for $25 each, tried them, at least one would work. Send the other back to Amazon.

...To me it sounds like I rather just use the splitter that I already have...and like I said...when I do get surround sound working, the audio like "disables" or something whenever it detects silence in the audio for a second (which happens a lot in gaming), and then it takes like a second for the audio to turn back on...it's highly annoying.

Also, optical won't do anything with surround sound on Switch.

@Joeynator3000
Right, but that’s with whatever you have. Different extractors have proven to work fine. If you really want the problem solved, I’m just trying to present you with solutions that have worked for others.

As for optical, actually I think your right. Because while it can carry a 5.1 signal, I believe it must be encoded with Dolby, which Switch doesn’t do. PCM raw signal is too large. Fair point on that. Perhaps some extractors encode it with Dolby before outputting? Worth looking into. Otherwise, just skip Optical and go straight for HDMI out from the extractor. Yes, I know your current thingymabob doesn’t work right, but it is possible with other devices.

@NintendoDad
Joey just helped me realize that Optical can only carry a 5.1 signal when it’s compressed in Dolby format. I don’t think Optical can carry a raw PCM 5.1 signal. And since that’s all Switch can output, HDMI is the only way to carry the surround and maintain the signal

So I’m not sure there’s a way to get surround from Switch if your soundbar doesn’t have an HDMI input.

@JaxonH

+1

Yes. I was recently reading about the bandwidth issue with optical.

If the Switch outputs an uncompressed stream, then the 5.1 won't get through the optical.

What I don't know (and going to try to test) is if the uncompressed stream can get through the coaxial digital cable. (My surround sound system has both digital coaxial and optical inputs. The coaxial digital-in is currently connected to my DVD player, but I can swap it around so I use the optical cable for DVD and assign the coaxial cable to the "CD" input on the amplifier and use that for Netflix, Disney+ and the Switch.) (I just had the coaxial cable hooked up to my DVD player because I had misplaced my optical cable. I thought I had lost it long ago. And I had an RCA cable lying around.)

But lots of unknowns.

1. Confirm the Switch is outputting an uncompressed 5.1 stream. (NOTE: I actually read a post on another site that the poster swears that when they put their Switch into Stereo mode, a Dolby Digital stream started coming out. I find that hard to believe. But maybe I could test for that with the extractor I am getting. ? )

2. Is my TV the culprit by stripping 5.1 down to 2 channel when going through the optical cable? I have my daughter's PC hooked up to the HDMI TV via HDMI. I have the optical-out from the TV hooked up to the optical-in of the surround system. When I play "The Matrix" with the Netflix Windows App, it only shows my 2.0 audio options. Not sure if Netflix is outputting uncompressed. Or a form of 5.1 that my sound system doesn't understand, and thus it selects Linear PCM and thus gets 2.0 channels. When reading, I thought it would have been Dolby Digital Plus?

3. Does coaxial have more bandwidth than optical? If so, maybe it can handle an uncompressed 5.1 surround sound stream? I don't know.

So a few things I want to test out.

Is my TV the bottle neck? Is the optical cable the bottle neck? Or is my 21+ year-old surround sound amplifier just too old to understand the 5.1 surround streams coming out of the Switch, Netflix and Disney+?

For $30 (CDN, so not even real money), I have the potential to test this out.

I didn't want to spend a lot. But I got one with both optical and coaxial digital out in hopes that that would let me test this out. LOL.

And as I pointed out above, even if none of this works, I still have a use for an HDMI audio extractor to stereo out (3.5mm analogue) on my work computer. LOL.

Also, it's not just PCM, it's LPCM, from what I've figured out that's even worse to deal with. I also found out that newer TVs that have eARC can handle that...don't think my TV has it, go figure. TwT

@Joeynator3000
Linear PCM, ya. I guess LPCM tends to refer to multichannel whereas PCM refers to 2 channel.

eARC is where it's at. I made sure I bought a TV that had an eARC HDMI port, as well as having all HDMI 2.1.

That said, Switch audio doesn't work using eARC passthrough from TV to soundbar. You have to run it into the soundbar and use eARC HDMI port on the soundbar to pass through the video to the TV. All other systems will worth running into the TV with eARC passing audio to the soundbar OR running into the soundbar with eARC passing video to the TV.

So for Switch, you want eARC on your actual soundbar. At least one HDMI in port on the soundbar and an eARC HDMI port to pass the video onto the TV. However, before eARC released there was just normal ARC, and normal ARC, though it doesn't have the bandwidth to pass through Dolby Vision to the TV (if running through soundbar) or Dolby Atmos to the soundbar (if running through TV) but Switch uses neither. And normal ARC is perfectly capable of handling whatever signal Switch throws at it.

So all you really need is a soundbar with an ARC HDMI port

....Not sure what you mean about the normal ARC...because surround sound on Switch doesn't work with normal ARC. I've tried, constantly...even messing with the TV's settings and nothing worked. Really the only thing that works is plugging it in directly to the sound bar, and even then it gives me weird issues.