Solution Found - Q950A eARC Problems

[Moralneeeick]

I have spent 4 painful days trying to solve the issues with eARC on the Q950A when paired with a Samsung TV (I have QN800A). I have finally got the eARC connection to persist and have some explains below. Hopefully someone from Samsung reads this and fixes their software.

What you need to sacrifice to get this to work:

Samsung universal remote for everything except Q950A.

CEC functionality from a non samsung device.

What the issues are:

1 - any device connected in the chain which has CEC enabled can break the earc handshake

2 - if you use samsung universal remote it will not leave the appropriate delays when turning on devices causing earc handshake to break

Steps to get a perfect earc setup:

1 - on every device except for TV disable CEC or HDMI control. Apple TV, Sky Q, Xbox, PS5. Has to be all of them.

2 - unplug all devices from tv and Soundbar and hard reset both. 950A hard reset is holding volume up and down on bar until you see INT displayed and then it says BYE.

3 - During Samsung tv setup plug everything back in (nothing into Soundbar, all into TV)

At this point samsung setup pairs things with the smart remote. But it also defaults earc to ‘off’ which is helpful for next step.

4 - once the tv is set up - do not enable earc (yet). Go to sources and universal remote and delete all sources created by Samsung so they default to HDMI 1, 2 etc. You can still rename them and add them to home just don’t use the universal remote.

5 - Turn off all HDMI inputs and turn off Soundbar.

6 - now enable earc in the menu. If it doesn’t switch on the Soundbar after this you can. It should detect earc for the first time.

7 - now turn on Xbox or PS5 - you will have to change the input manually on Samsung remote. In samsung sound settings on tv once the input is up select pass through and leave it.

Now you have an earc connection which can’t be killed by external sources. One final point:

whenever you turn on tv - make sure you turn on tv first and no other device. Soundbar should come on automatically if you have a Samsung tv - if not turn that on after tv is on. Check you have earc - if so you’re safe to turn other devices on.

I don’t know if Samsung will fix this - but I know understand why it’s not totally within their control. However it is in their control to fix pass through for multi channel LPCM and DTS-X.

make sure Xbox is set to bitstream Atmos pass through and PlayStation set to Dolby. Also make sure to change blu ray app output to bitstream within the player to get lossless Atmos.

Hope this helps someone. And I hope Samsung read it.

[meshaw]

Thanks for the breakdown above. I did similar and was able to get the soudbar to work except for the following...

I cant use HDMI 1 or HDMI 2 if the soundbar is connected (to HDMI-3 eARC port). As soon as I plug something into either port the soundbar disconnects and no longer works properly. still get sound but lose many of the soundbar function).

[Eric H]

Dear Meshaw, yes problems for me are solved. A Samsung mechanic made a house visit to do a firmware update on my 2021 QLED TV (not available online). It took him 2 hrs to do this. At first this did not solve all problems, but when I, accidently,  switched to PCM instead of throughput in the audio source setup page the problems solved.

The sound is good (when you get past all these setup problems) but considering all the problems I would not buy this sytem again but choose the Bose system which is more expensive but its older version (V30) served me many years without any hickups and they have an Atmos version now too.

Hope you can solve your problems as well!

Regards

[Ronnoc69]

Thank you for this, read the internet from one side to the other without any luck, then found your post and this resolved my issues.
My satellite TV provider's box doesnt have an option to disable CEC and whenever My Samsung Q60R TV set up the Universal remote control for it it broke the ARC connection between Q950A sound bar and Q60R TV and would not work again till factory resetting again.
Now I just cancell the Universal remote wizard and leave it setup as an unknown HDMI device on the input.
No issues since!!

[crazyjohnyw]

Oh no. I thought I was the only one having Q950a soundbar problem on the earc.  I just bought a Q950a soundbar along with a Q80a 85 inch tv, I just couldn't get the earc to work on the soundbar because i wanna try dolby atmos. I spent 3 hours with samsung tech support, which is very very helpless..... After a few reset on the tv and soundbar, still didn't work.  I found a way to make it work a for about half hour, I unplug every hdmi conncetion on the tv, reset the power to the tv, with the tv and soundbar on, plug the hdmi port back on, then it detect the soundbar, however, tv remote doesn't control the soundbar even with anynet cec is on. but it only last about 30 mins, something was affecting the connection to drop. later on, i couldn't detect the soundbar anymore.... Very disappointing ab out samsung product....

[crazyjohnyw]

Don't buy, samsung didn't fix it yet. I just bought Q950a soundbar along with Q80a 85 inch tv, earc on the soundbar still have issue.  spent 3 hours with samsung tech support, they have no clue what the problem is, and they blame the soundbar, so i return it. the exchange hasn't come yet.

[Eric H]

Dear John, did you manage to get tv and soundbar to connect to each other via WiFi? That was a good backup for me and at least gets sound from soundbar? (See earlier post)

[crazyjohnyw]

If you wanna use soundbar on wifi mode, you have to use smart things app I belive, and that's how I did it. However, if you use it, you lose earc, I heard on this forum.  I'm hoping samsung will be able to fix this problem.... everyone give samsung a call and report the earc problem

[Ronnoc69]

I finally found what's causing my problems.

My Xiaomi Mi Box S Android TV box, when it was in standby mode I would have endless hassles trying to get sound bar to work.

Changed it to never go to sleep and have not an issue since.

Everything is working 100% now.

Hope this helps someone.

[crazyjohnyw]

Ronno, where is your mibox hdmi  connecting to? Soundbar input or tv hdmi port?

[Ronnoc69]

I tried both, both caused issues when device on standby or asleep.

Both work perfectly when the sleep function disabled on MiBox.

I have now put it back through TV HDMI with sleep disabled and everything working like a dream.