Hello,
I'm looking for suggestions and guidance.
I have a 700 Soundbar with the bass module and rear speakers hooked to an LG CX TV, an Nvidia Shield Pro (2019) and a PS5, and after a lot of fiddling around (I'm far from an expert or audiophile) I was finally able to get my Shield and TV to pass LPCM to the Bose so that it does all the processing there, as I would think that should be the best... but is it?
As I said, I'm no audiophile, but I want to get the most out of my setup. So I am looking for suggestions. For example: is it better to pass LPCM from the Shield or my PS5 (I have some UHD Blurays with Atmos) and have the soundbar do the downprocessing to what it considers best? Or should I have my devices do the Atmos processing and just pass bitstream to the Soundbar? I certainly have noticed in some MKVs with both Atmos/TrueHD and regular DD that the Atmos track sound a bit lower, even a bit muffled when in bitstream. I also had to put the SHIELD to "None" on the audio formats menu so that it will always do LPCM, but not sure this is the correct setting.
Can anyone help with what are the best settings to get the best sound, even if that means not using Atmos (since the soundbar is only 5.1 anyway). Thanks!
My current settings/setup:
-
Soundbar 700 Bass Module 700 Wireless Speakers (FW: 10.0.11-8771 cee8b62)
- Hooked to the TV using the Bose provided HDMI cable.
-
LG CX TV on the latest firmware 03.21.16 (I belive LPCM was not working in some early FW)
- DTV Audio Setting: Auto
- eARC: On
- Digital Sound Out: Pass Through
- HDMI Input Audio Format: PCM
-
NVIDIA Shield TV Pro 2019
- Dolby Audio processing: Off
- Select Formats > None (Never use surround sound) [This one was a weird one, but on Auto it didn't detect any formats and it sounded better with none while still outputting 5.1, just not sure if it was native 5.1 or the Soundbar was upmixing).
- Hooked to the TV with a HDMI 2.1 cable.
The only way I was able to be sure the TV was passing LPCM is because I also have a Nintendo Switch, which does not do Bitstream at all, only LPCM and before I made the changes on my TV, whenever I chose Surround ON on the Switch, I could not hear all the channels on the Test, only after I changed to the aforementioned settings on the TV I was able to hear all six sounds from the Switch audio test.
Sorry for the long post, I hope we can get on some nice discussion and find the best solution for anyone with similar setups!
Thank you!