Has anyone connected an AppleTV to an Ultra using an HDMI splitter?

[Paul911]

My setup is this amp which has a turntable, bluray and Wiim Pro as inputs. There's also an Apple TV in there. I wanted to get an Ultra but the lack of Airplay is an issue. I'm looking at getting an HDMI splitter that does ARC and then send that to the Ultra. This would allow me to listen to the Apple TV over the vintage amp. Does anyone see a problem with that plan? Thanks.

 

[harkpabst]

I don't think that this setup will work, but I would also think it's not even necessary.

As far as I know the AppleTV has a regular HDMI output. Audio and video go to the receiving device's HDMI input (usually a TV). The audio signal contained in the Apple TV's output cannot be send to the Ultra's HDMI port, which technically is an HDMI output, sending no video, but expecting an Audio Return Channel signal. That signal is different from regular audio send to HDMI inputs.

Adding a splitter wouldn't change that. I have seen splitters that can pass through the ARC signal, but none that would be able to create it.

But if your TV has at least one regular HDMI input to connect the Apple TV to and another HDMI input supporting ARC (not eARC) then you could hook up the WiiM Ultra to this HDMI input labelled ARC. The TV receives audio and video from all kinds of sources and one of its HDMI inputs is able to send audio data back to the connected device. It doesn't care if this device is really sending any video or not. That's the entire idea behind HDMI ARC.

So, if I understood your setup and your goal correctly, the setup would be:

• Apple TV HDMI out to TV 1st HDMI in.
• TV 2nd HDMI in (marked ARC) to Ultra HDMI port.
• Ultra analogue RCA out to Kenwood RCA in.

The obvious drawback is that the TV needs to be powered on to pass whatever it receives from the Apple TV (e.g. AirPlay) to the Ultra.

 

[Paul911]

Thanks @harkpabst. That's the best explanation of ARC I've seen.

Unfortunately, the TV is an old Panasonic Plasma. It has no HDMI out. Even if it did, it'd be a fair bit of work to send another HDMI cable back since the TV is on the wall and the cables go through the wall.

I did find these splitters though that might do it.

4K Arcana 18Gbps | HDFury.com | Connect and Fix everything in HDMI

No eARC TV ? No problem! And no more lip sync issues for eARC TV owners! WORLD’S FIRST eARC adapter that allows FULL AUDIO up to Dolby Atmos over TrueHD from ANY external HDMI source to ANY eARC sound system. Perfect solution for SONOS Arc and ANY eARC AVR, soundbar or headphones. The Arcana...

hdfury.com

4K HDMI Audio Extractor Switch With ARC/eARC and EDID management (HDA-

OREI HDA-934: Dual HDMI eARC HDMI Audio Extractor Key Features: HDMI 2.0b and HDCP 2.2 compliant Video resolutions up to 4K@60Hz RGB/YCbCr 4:4:4 18Gbps video bandwidth 3D, HDR, HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision pass-through Connect up to 3 input sources with 1 HDMI ARC/eARC soundbar to a display...

www.orei.com

I guess the other possibility is an HDMI audio extractor that sends 2 channel over S/PDIF. I tried a cheap one previously and wasn't impressed.

 

[Neil08]

OP, for a lower cost option to get audio out of your ATV, Amir @ ASR gives the Amazon Basics HDMI audio extractor a recommendation.

Amazon Basics 4K HDMI Extractor Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Amazon Basics 4K HDMI extractor. Member kindly purchased and drop shipped it to me. It normally costs $22.89 but was on sale for just $5!!! The case is the standard metal one for these kinds of adapters. Power is provided with a supplied USB-A...

www.audiosciencereview.com

This has spdif optical and analog outputs, so could go directly into the Ultra or your amp. It also passes HDMI through to go into your plasma.

 

[Fernandodelae]

My setup is this amp which has a turntable, bluray and Wiim Pro as inputs. There's also an Apple TV in there. I wanted to get an Ultra but the lack of Airplay is an issue. I'm looking at getting an HDMI splitter that does ARC and then send that to the Ultra. This would allow me to listen to the Apple TV over the vintage amp. Does anyone see a problem with that plan? Thanks.

View attachment 10365

Such a beautiful Kenwood Amp.

 

[harkpabst]

Thanks @harkpabst. That's the best explanation of ARC I've seen.

Unfortunately, the TV is an old Panasonic Plasma. It has no HDMI out. Even if it did, it'd be a fair bit of work to send another HDMI cable back since the TV is on the wall and the cables go through the wall.

I did find these splitters though that might do it.

4K Arcana 18Gbps | HDFury.com | Connect and Fix everything in HDMI

No eARC TV ? No problem! And no more lip sync issues for eARC TV owners! WORLD’S FIRST eARC adapter that allows FULL AUDIO up to Dolby Atmos over TrueHD from ANY external HDMI source to ANY eARC sound system. Perfect solution for SONOS Arc and ANY eARC AVR, soundbar or headphones. The Arcana...

hdfury.com

4K HDMI Audio Extractor Switch With ARC/eARC and EDID management (HDA-

OREI HDA-934: Dual HDMI eARC HDMI Audio Extractor Key Features: HDMI 2.0b and HDCP 2.2 compliant Video resolutions up to 4K@60Hz RGB/YCbCr 4:4:4 18Gbps video bandwidth 3D, HDR, HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision pass-through Connect up to 3 input sources with 1 HDMI ARC/eARC soundbar to a display...

www.orei.com

I guess the other possibility is an HDMI audio extractor that sends 2 channel over S/PDIF. I tried a cheap one previously and wasn't impressed.

It looks like these two devices actually could do what you are after, at least on paper. But there are some things to consider.

The HD Fury 4K Arcana 18Gbps is pretty expensive, so the total invest including an Ultra is high. Unfortunately the manual gives no clear indication if you can restrict the "eARC out" to just "ARC" (as the Ultra doesn't support eARC). The following quote is straight from the FAQ section in the manual, but it really applies to many devices:

ARC/CEC features added during development due to people request are not yet flawless on all display
brands/models and will need many updates to become anywhere close to perfect simply because CEC is
25 years old coming from old scart age in Europe. There is no standard for it and every manufacturer
implements it as they want it.
If ARC is not working well yet out of the box, you can turn OFF option called TV ARC ROUTING in AUDIO
menu that is present since Firmware FW0.71 or turn off TV ARC and/or CEC or not use TV ARC input till
there is a next update available and you can retry.
There might be several different settings to try, example on Sony TVs: some got their displays ARC sound
working after using the Sony CEC reset commands listed.
eARC ONLY option (default since FW0.71) might need to be changed to TV+Display or Auto for
ARC/HDMI selection to work on some display, so make sure you tried that too.

The Orei HDA-934 eARC HDMI Audio Extractor is a lot less expensive. It allows to explicitly restrict audio to 2.0. ARC/eARC is mentioned several times so one could hope that it will work with eARC and ARC devices (but again, it's not perfectly clear and the button just disables ARC/eARC altogether). "Situation 3" described in the manual reflects your use case.

The Amazon Basics Audio extractor as shown by @Neil08 is certainly the lowest risk option as far as wasted money goes. It's optical output probably makes most sense, if occupying the only toslink input of the Ultra is no problem. Unfortunately it looks like the quality of the HDMI video pass-through is not the best, if one decides to trust in Amazon reviews. Some also complain about audio output being unreliable.

The decision is all but easy in your use case ...

 

[Paul911]

Thanks again @harkpabst. Very well reasoned. I was soured on the typical audio extractors because of the previous one I had, but I'll try another, starting with the Amazon basics one.

 

[Paul911]

Such a beautiful Kenwood Amp.

Thanks, it sounds glorious and WiiMs are really good for adding streaming to a vintage receiver or amp.

 

[Kampernaut]

If your TV has a Toslink optical port, you can connect the Apple TV to the WiiM that way. That’s how I do it (with a Pro Plus rather than Ultra). No extra kit required then and much cleaner. I did have one of those splitters, but it’s just another box and power supply. There was no technical advantage.

The TV resamples everything to 24-bit/48 kHz, but the sound quality is fantastic to my ears, especially when you get the EQ right (major reason for me having the WiiM). Apple Music is my primary music source, so the Apple TV is wonderful for the display. I don’t think I would ever use the Ultra’s display even if I had one.

Even though the Apple TV itself is my major streamer, I also like the Pro Plus presets for radio stations and the remote. For me, the Pro Plus is acting as a good DAC with parametric EQ to connect my old amplifier. It comes with a brilliant app, remote control and more features if I ever wanted them. It’s great that the product development is so active.

 

[Paul911]

If your TV has a Toslink optical port, you can connect the Apple TV to the WiiM that way. That’s how I do it (with a Pro Plus rather than Ultra). No extra kit required then and much cleaner. I did have one of those splitters, but it’s just another box and power supply. There was no technical advantage.

The TV resamples everything to 24-bit/48 kHz, but the sound quality is fantastic to my ears, especially when you get the EQ right (major reason for me having the WiiM). Apple Music is my primary music source, so the Apple TV is wonderful for the display. I don’t think I would ever use the Ultra’s display even if I had one.

Even though the Apple TV itself is my major streamer, I also like the Pro Plus presets for radio stations and the remote. For me, the Pro Plus is acting as a good DAC with parametric EQ to connect my old amplifier. It comes with a brilliant app, remote control and more features if I ever wanted them. It’s great that the product development is so active.

It does, but I'd like to not have to turn the TV on.

 

[Jls]

Can anyone speak to the issue of lip sync? Does the Ultra DSP delay the audio? Does an extractor affect sync?

 

[harkpabst]

Can anyone speak to the issue of lip sync? Does the Ultra DSP delay the audio?

No problem here, but that's the Ulta connected via HDMI. EQ/sub filtering on or off doesn't make a difference.

But that doesn't help @Paul911, of course.

Does an extractor affect sync?

I don't know. Maybe we will get some results here.

 

[Paul911]

No problem here, but that's the Ulta connected via HDMI. EQ/sub filtering on or off doesn't make a difference.

But that doesn't help @Paul911, of course.


I don't know. Maybe we will get some results here.

I currently have a WiiM Pro (which I want to move when I get an Ultra) in the location and the old extractor I didn't like. I can wire that in and see if I get sync issues. I will say I use the Apple TV via Airplay to the WiiM Pro occasionally now. It usually has no sync issues but there have been times where I've had to reconnect the Airplay feed.

 

[Jls]

When I used an AVR, the sound was split. The TV had a video lag, and it was necessary to set a sound delay in the AVR.

Now I’m facing the opposite problem. I have a Roku going to the TV, and optical sound coming out. Could be ARC, but the principle is the same. Any delay in audio, such as by Sonos or by a DSP, is a problem.

So it seems possible that a splitter between the Roku and TV would bypass the normal TV video delay, and allow sync to be done by the audio devices.

 

[Paul911]

Finally, a follow up.

First, I'll say that that the Amazon Basics HDMI audio extractor does sound quite good. I put that in between my Apple TV and the TV, then sent the audio to my current Wiim Pro via toslink. The pros, sound and functionality for music played by the Apple TV is nice. I tested using both Apple Music and Spotify, as well as songs Airplayed from my phone to the ATV. All good.

The downside is for video related apps, like Apple TV+ or Netflix, it completely hijacks the audio and sends it only over toslink. This means I have to have the amp just to watch a TV show. This doesn't work for my wife.

I also had this lying around: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017B6WFP8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

On the surface, it seems like it's the same device as the Amazon Basics extractor. The upside of this one is it will send audio for video apps (Apple TV+, Netflix) to both the TV and the amp. The downside is it sounds like complete crap for music. The levels coming out of it for music are very low and it's even worse if I Airplay from my phone to the Apple TV. I don't get it.

I still think Wiim dropped the ball in a big way by not having Airplay on the Ultra.