Solved! Need help extracting HDMI audio from receiver/TV connection

[cliving1980]

Hello,

I have a Yamaha RX-V371 receiver (manual) that currently connected to receive input from my cable provider (HDMI2 input) and HDMI from my Blu-ray/DVD player (HDMI1 input). The HDMI OUT of my receiver is connected to my Panasonic TC-P50S60 TV (manual). Both my receiver and TV are capable of HDMI ARC.


BD/DVD ------------------------------------------------> RX-V371 (HDMI1 IN)
Cable ----------------------------------------------------> RX-V371 (HDMI2 IN)

RX-V371 (HDMI OUT ARC capable) -----------> TV (ARC capable)
RX-V371 (SPK OUT) --------------------------------> Speakers


A family member of mine is hard of hearing and requires the receiver to have the speaker volume very high, which is too loud for the rest of us. To get around this, I would like to connect a wireless headset so that they can adjust the volume as they please while we can listen via the speakers unaffected. The wireless headsets that I have require analog RCA input so I need to somehow extract audio from my receiver.

As a first measure, I purchased this HDMI audio extractor and placed it in series with the HDMI OUT (ARC) of the receiver and HDMI of the TV. Unfortunately, this did not seem to work. I tried to change the receivers audio from 5 channel to 2 channel, toggle ARC on and off, but to no avail. Only now did I realize that the TV might have had ARC enabled which could have messed this up.

As a second attempt, I purchased this lineout converter and connected it in parallel with the front L/R speakers. I was able to hear audio through my wireless headsets but it was not loud enough at max volume and there was a terrible mains hum.

I think the first method (HDMI audio extractor) might work, but I can't seem to configure the receiver or TV properly to get audio and video sent to the TV unidirectionally and extract the HDMI audio. Since all of my audio/video content is coming from devices that pass to the receiver and not from the TV, I believe ARC should be disabled for this to work.

Wondering if anyone has any suggestions.


Thank you

 

[SkyNetRising]

Doesn't your receiver have headphone output? Use that to connect wireless headset.

 

[cliving1980]

Doesn't your receiver have headphone output? Use that to connect wireless headset.

Unfortunately, using the receiver's headphone output enables silent mode which means the speaker output is disabled, which is not what I'm looking for.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Silent mode is very simple to circumvent. This is schematic, how silent mode is achieved.
You just have to make 2 connections permanent, so they don't get interrupted upon inserting headphone plug.

It's as simple as soldering 2 small wires to bridge 4 contacts.

 

[mveras1972]

I have the same problem and the issue is that the receiver does not output HDMI audio to the TV. So the HDMI out is only video, no audio. That's the typical behavior for receivers unless you enable a feature that passes the audio to the TV, but the downside to that is that it converts everything to 2-channel audio, so if you want to watch something that has multichannel audio, like 5.1 or more, you are sacrificing the quality of the sound. Of course, you can always change back and forth between enabling audio to passthrough to the TV whenever you want to use the wireless headset, but the menus on the receivers are quite convoluted in most cases to change this particular setting. I see no way around this issue. The only workaround I can think of is to connect the HDMI extractor to the output of your source instead of the output of the receiver, but the downside to this is you only get audio from only one source.

 

[americanaudiophile]

Plan A
ARC gets sound from the TV to the receiver with the same cable that gets video from the receiver to the TV. If your sources are connected directly to the TV then you could use an HDMI ARC extractor. You will get surround sound this way but not lossless audio like Dolby TrueHD or Atmos.
Plan B
Connect the BD player and cable box to an external HDMI input selector with audio extraction. The HDMI output of that goes to the AVR. The audio output of the selector goes to the transmitter for the headphones.