Solved! LG TV to LG sound bar via hdmi arc. I need a toslink tap for hearing aides

[Scamps]

I have had a LG OLED65B8PUA TV and decided to add a LG SL8YG which I received today. I also have a Phonak TVlink II for my hearing aids. The TV has 1 setting that provides simultaneous audio to 2 devices and that is Internal Speakers and Optical. If you select ARC, Optical or Bluetooth no other outputs can be active.

I have 2 questions
Is it possible to have a hdmi device between the TV & Soundbar? If yes, can it (split, tap, extract) the audio to a toslink output to drive my Phonak device and still have hdmi arc to the soundbar. I would love to keep the Dolby Atmos capabilities of the TV and Soundbar.

Thanks
scamps

 

[americanaudiophile]

If the TV doesn't have eARC, rather than older ARC, it won't send Atmos from the TV to the soundbar so you can just split the optical output and send it to both.
I suspect the only way to actually get Atmos is to connect the source to the HDMI input of the soundbar.
In the case of this 3.1.2 soundbar you don't get surround sound since there are no rear channels. Adding a couple of upward firing speakers may improve the sound so if it does just select a mode on the soundbar that will play the Atmos speakers with non-Atmos content.