I thought my TV's sound problems were unfixable until I found this little gadget

Summary

HDFury Arcana adds eARC capabilities to older TVs for enhanced audio formats like Dolby Atmos, ideal for Sonos users.
Arcana allows for full lossless audio and Dolby Atmos playback for Blu-ray discs by passing audio directly to Sonos Arc soundbar.
The HDFury Arcana is a niche product primarily designed for Sonos fans seeking top-notch audio despite their TV’s limitations.

I love my TV, but it has one big problem. It’s old, and old TVs don’t always have the most up-to-date features, which can wreak havoc on a modern home theater system. In my case, my trusty

LG OLED E6
, from 2016, doesn’t have

eARC capabilities
, and it can’t pass through high-end audio formats like DTS:X or the now-common Dolby Atmos to my

Sonos Arc
soundbar.

Thankfully, one enterprising company set out to fix this problem, with Sonos owners particularly in mind. The HDFury 4K Arcana is designed to add eARC functionality to any TV. It takes an HDMI signal from an external device, like an Apple TV or Blu-ray player, and sends the video out to a TV, while routing all audio from both the TV itself and the connected device, to a soundbar or other sound system.

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While most people will not need the Arcana, or might not want to go through the bother, for those looking to maximize their home theater experience while holding onto an older television, it’s the perfect tool.

HDFury 4K Arcana 18Gbps

Brand: HDFury
Connectivity: 1x HDMI In, 2x HDMI Out
Power: USB with adapter
Price: $249

Sound situation

Audio formats on Blu-ray

Blu-ray collectors will likely know well that, since its inception, the audio codec of choice on most discs is DTS-HD Master Audio. While all

Blu-ray
players are required to implement both DTS and Dolby Digital, along with lossless PCM, one major benefit of the format is the ability to play higher-resolution audio.

It was DTS that won out in the Blu-ray era.

For most of the Blu-ray format’s history, the high watermarks for audio quality were DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD. Both are lossless audio codecs, capable of delivering significantly higher quality surround sound for home theater owners. As it turned out, in the competition between DTS and Dolby, it was DTS that won out in the Blu-ray era. While Dolby TrueHD did appear on many discs, the majority went with DTS-HD MA.

That changed with the introduction of Ultra HD Blu-ray, which supports both DTS:X and Dolby Atmos. These are object-based surround audio formats that are actually each contained within their respective DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD codecs. Atmos has far and away been the winner of that format battle, with most UHD Blu-rays opting for an Atmos soundtrack in a Dolby TrueHD container. Still, there are some filmmakers who don’t do Atmos mixes for their films, and films that never had them to begin with, and often those will still use DTS-HD MA on a UHD Blu-ray.

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My Sonos problem

DTS and a lot of compromises

The problems for me began when I got my first Sonos soundbar, their once-standard Playbar. I’d already bought into the Sonos ecosystem, and I liked the idea of having my TV’s audio system connected to it, as well. I set it up with a pair of Sonos Play:1s acting as rear surround speakers, and it all worked well. With my Apple TV, that is.

Sonos at the time did not support DTS audio playback.

The Apple TV output Dolby Digital, which my TV happily routed through a TOSLINK optical audio cable to the Playbar, which then happily pumped surround audio through the system. The problem came when I tried playing a Blu-ray — all I heard was silence. As I soon discovered that, I realized that Sonos (at the time) did not support DTS audio playback, and had no immediate plans to. That meant the majority of my Blu-ray collection, which at the time was already quite large, could not be played properly through my system.

There was a workaround, though. The Playbar could also play PCM, so all I had to do was set my Blu-ray player to output DTS as a lossless PCM track. That did the trick, except that standard PCM can only do stereo, meaning I wasn’t actually getting surround sound from my discs. I lived with this for a while, but it kept nagging at me.

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Arc of justice

The beginnings of a solution

Sonos Arc Ultra and the Sub 4 in a room.

@MysteryLupin

After years of dealing with stereo audio coming from my surround sound Blu-rays, I finally thought I had a solution when Sonos announced the Arc soundbar. The new product could connect to a TV via HDMI, which meant that while it didn’t support DTS, it could handle the newer LPCM standard, which can do multichannel lossless audio up to 7.1 channels. By then, I had already started buying UHD Blu-rays, and was eager to hear some Dolby Atmos tracks, which the Sonos Arc natively supports, alongside those trusty old DTS-HD MA ones.

It was then that I received a rude awakening. My soundbar could finally play the audio, but while I could get Dolby Digital and stereo PCM, Atmos and LPCM still weren’t working. After some more research, I discovered my other problem: my TV itself.

The Sonos Arc gets its audio from the TV’s Audio Return Channel (ARC) port, and HDMI port designed to pass through audio to a soundbar. ARC, an older standard, does not pass through either Dolby or DTS lossless codecs, nor does it work with LPCM. Losing out on HD audio, I could handle, but I wasn’t even able to get compressed surround sound from my UHD Blu-ray of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, which has a DTS-HD MA track.

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Arcana to the rescue

HDFury creates my dream product

HDFury / Pocket-lint

At a certain point, I was convinced that the only way I’d be able to enjoy my Blu-rays in their full glory was to just swap my TV with one that had an eARC port. The “e” stands for “enhanced,” and the newer port is capable of handling any audio someone can throw at it, including Dolby TrueHD with Atmos, DTS-HD MA, and LPCM.

In essence, it’s a device for people who need eARC functionality, but don’t have an eARC-capable TV.

Then, I discovered the company HDFury, which was prepping a product essentially tailor-made for people in my specific situation, geared directly toward Sonos users. They called it the Arcana, and it’s kind of like a fancy HDMI splitter and audio extractor. In essence, it’s a device for people who need eARC functionality, but don’t have an eARC-capable TV.

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The software update also expands audio swap support with the Arc to Android devices.

How it works

Getting the best audio possible

The HDFury Arcana can be used in a variety of configurations, as shown in the slideshow above. My setup is similar to the first image. I have my UHD Blu-ray player directly connected to the Arcana’s HDMI IN port to deliver Dolby TrueHD and LPCM audio. I then have the Arcana’s HDMI OUT port connected to my Sonos Arc.

Meanwhile, I have my TV’s ARC HDMI port hooked up to the Arcana’s eARC OUT port. The result is that video from my UHD Blu-ray player is passed through the Arcana and out to the TV, while audio goes directly to the Sonos Arc. Additionally, any audio that comes from the TV itself, or anything hooked up to it directly, is passed down through the Arcana and out to the Sonos system, as well.

The HDFury Arcana can be used in a variety of configurations.

The one downside to my configuration is that while I am able to get full lossless audio and Dolby Atmos from my Blu-ray and UHD Blu-ray discs, because my Apple TV 4K is hooked up directly to my TV, I can’t get Atmos from it. That’s because the TV still can’t pass through the higher-resolution Dolby Digital Plus format required. Not the biggest loss, as the audio is still surround sound, but I can’t get Atmos from the Apple TV, and I have considered getting an HDMI switcher to fix that.

The Arcana also has other advantages, including enabling CEC volume control, Dolby Vision-to-HDR10 conversion, audio delay correction, which can all be set via its small OLED screen. HDFury has also introduced an 8K Arcana 2, which can also handle variable refresh rates for gaming.

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Who should get an Arcana?

A niche product for grateful Sonos users

A Blu-ray player with question marks over it.

There is no question that the HDFury Arcana is a niche product. Though there may be other use cases, it’s a device designed primarily for modern Sonos soundbar owners to get the best possible audio experience, no matter what TV they have. For people who have bought a new high-end TV in the last four or five years, chances are, it has eARC built-in, meaning they probably don’t need the Arcana. Though even then, there might be reasons to get one.

First off, the Arcana can help with video and audio issues that might be plaguing external devices connected to a TV. Additionally, while most TVs now support eARC, many do not support LPCM well or at all. Passing through Dolby TrueHD is fine, but DTS-HD MA is a problem. Though Sonos has recently added DTS support, it only works with the base, lossy codec, not lossless HD Master Audio.

Again, the Arcana solves this problem by allowing a Blu-ray player to convert DTS-HD MA to LPCM and send that signal straight to the soundbar. Now, when I watch Tenet, I get the full experience.