Using those sweet phones with your soundbar/home theater setup

[jayadubya]

Hi folks! I don't think this question has been asked at this level, so thought I'd start here! I have a growing collection of beautiful headphones, most of which I use with a Fiio K7 USB DAC at my desk where I work.

Last year I also invested in the lovely Sony Ht-A7000 home theatre setup, including the SA-SW3 subwoofer and the SA-RS5 rear speakers. When I don't want to rattle the house, or late at night, I'd love to bring a nice pair of closed, over-ear headphones into the living room and plug those in. I naively assumed the A7000 would have a headphone line out - it does not! Nor does my Samsung display (although it does have optical out).

The A700 has Bluetooth transmission capability, but I kind of want (okay, I demand) wired-in sound, and I'm fine with using a 10ft cable or whatever. The soundbar is really designed to receive HDMI inputs, then push the signal to the display.

I use an Xbox Series X, and I can plug headphones into the 3.5mm jack on the controller. That is surprisingly good (I wouldn't have thought they'd have a good DAC in a joystick!), but I am left feeling like I'm missing some of the output of that soundbar. Maybe I'm wrong?

One option: I thought perhaps I could use a small DAC with an optical input line coming from the display. The Soundbar is connected to the display via eARC HDMI, so I believe the display would output an ideal signal. I'd probably have to manually control the volume. I've tried using the Fiio BTR5 over BT, but honestly it's too cumbersome and I'd rather not worry as much about batteries.

Appreciate any thoughts or guidance!

 

[Andretti60]

How far are you from the bedrooms? The sound from open headphones doesn’t travel that far.

 

[ZolaIII]

And what exactly is stopping you from using K7 as you did before?

 

[jayadubya]

How far are you from the bedrooms? The sound from open headphones doesn’t travel that far.

Pretty close to the bedrooms - but my interest is primarily in just using headphones while watching TV/Gaming. I'm definitely not worried about sound from headphones waking anyone up.

 

[jayadubya]

And what exactly is stopping you from using K7 as you did before?
View attachment 272000

Yeah! I might get another K7 to do that, or maybe something cheaper with optical in (if there is one).

The thing is, the one I have now stays in my office - quite far from my living room (where the home theater stuff is). I certainly could test a setup with the K7 (specifically to make sure the optical out on the TV is actually carrying the right signal).

 

[ZolaIII]

Yeah! I might get another K7 to do that, or maybe something cheaper with optical in (if there is one).

The thing is, the one I have now stays in my office - quite far from my living room (where the home theater stuff is). I certainly could test a setup with the K7 (specifically to make sure the optical out on the TV is actually carrying the right signal).

Ah didn't get they are apart and hard to menage.
Try the optical with it and then take a look at index at ASR for DAC/headphone amp and read a rewiev from there to find what best suits you and for the price.
Best regards and have a nice time.
Edit: make sure that you put optical out from TV to PCM only (in TV options)!
See how cheap you could get Creative Sound BlasterX G6 if you like it and find it sufficient enough (as proposition for a good chap one that also work with Dolby beatstreams trough optical input).

 

[jayadubya]

Ah didn't get they are apart and hard to menage.
Try the optical with it and then take a look at index at ASR for DAC/headphone amp and read a rewiev from there to find what best suits you and for the price.
Best regards and have a nice time.
Edit: make sure that you put optical out from TV to PCM only (in TV options)!
See how cheap you could get Creative Sound BlasterX G6 if you like it and find it sufficient enough (as proposition for a good chap one that also work with Dolby beatstreams trough optical input).

Super helpful, thanks Zolalll! The SoundBlasterX g6 looks like a good candidate, and lots of power. I think I'll give that a shot!

 

[jayadubya]

Well, it turns out after some experimentation that the Optical out on my Samsung display will only output the sound that the TV/display produces, not the sound brought in from the A7000 soundbar. It works fine if I'm just watching TV and want to get audio from TV source (like tv channels). It seems the a7000, even though it's using an eARC connection, only sends the 4k video signal to the display.

That's left me with the -maybe- option of using the a7000's Bluetooth transmitter mode, but that's proving difficult too. I can get my cheap samsung buds to connect via Bluetooth (there's an ugly .5 second or so delay, but whatever) but I cannot get my Fiio BTR5 to 'receive' that audio and push it through headphones. My backup plan was to get a good DAC with BT (looking at the SMSL c200) and try to receive that transmitted BT signal from the a7000 and listen via this DAC. It seems like overkill! I'm also thinking it might be a fairly degraded sound, but maybe not. The A7000 has BT5.0 and LDAC etc. Just wish the damn thing had a headphone output!

As a penultimate effort I've been thinking of getting a DAC with HDMI in, or an HDMI pass-through to tackle this. But from a bit of research I'm guessing this is a bit of a mess given licensing and encryption of HDMI signals. I was looking at this one, and have seen it discussed elsewhere in the forums. I have a feeling it will mangle the 4k HDR feed, and I'm also sensing if the Roku or Xbox output anything DTS or atmos it will not be decodable. Oi.

And lastly I found this 4K HDMI switcher (I've used other models before). This has a nice Toslink out, which I think I could patch right into any dac with optical in. This way I could add any video-out devices (roku, xbox, etc) and pull the audio out before it goes to the A7000. I feel like that might be the clincher, but man it's a PITA that Sony didn't offer a line out on the soundbar. Oh well!