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Comment by recursive | Hacker News Reader

Modern AV stuff is insane. I have no interest in taking it up as a hobby. I have an xbox, a TV, and a pair of bookshelf speakers. How am I supposed to get the audio to the speakers without a bulky expensive receiver box? Luckily, I have one of the last remaining TVs with a headphone jack. I don't use a remote for any of it.

Side note: Sometimes the TV doesn't come on when you press its power button. After a tremendous amount of experimentation, I determined this was because the "brain" was on, but the backlight was not. Power cycling it blind usually fixes it. That's harder than it sounds though because you have to navigate the menu blind using short and long button presses with the one button. But I'm scared to try a new TV, because then I'm going to have to figure out how to get audio out of the TV.

It seems like AV stuff used to be so simple. Now the simplest scenarios seem to require more and more knowledge about arcane connection standard interactions and network topology. Ugh.

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That little headphone jack is seriously driving bookshelf speakers to a reasonable volume? If it works it works but that doesn't sound right, unless these are actually self-powered speakers with their own amplifiers inside. I'd really like to know the details because this sounds crazy.

Also, I collect a lot of old receivers and speakers. It's really not that complicated and the basics have been the same since the 70s and 80s. Any flatscreen TV made in the past 20 years typically has a TOSLINK output which will be compatible with receivers stretching back to the 80s - I have my LG C1 connected to some 90s Marantz receiver this way. Any old receiver you find on Facebook Marketplace for $20 will typically suffice here as long as you check for the TOSLINK port first, but you do need a separate actual amplifier somewhere along the line to drive a speaker larger than a pair of headphones unless the speaker has its own amp built-in.

I find all this stuff fun so my own setup has that chained to a series of other receivers acting as subwoofer amplifiers as well as using the pre-amp output to drive a Mesa Baron tube amplifier/Acoustat electrostats I was gifted, but most people don't need anything so complex.

I was kind of in OP's shoes a few months ago. My 2000-2010 era stereo receiver crapped out and I was looking to see if I could simplify my system a bit. Unlike OP, I didn't need anything that could extract audio from the TV. My requirements were:

1. A decoder with at least 5.1 output since that's how many speakers I have

2. At least 3 HDMI inputs + 1 HDMI output to my TV

3. An amplifier with a volume control

That's it! I don't need an FM tuner. I don't need multiple zones. I don't need wild listening modes and DSP effects. I don't need an on-TV setup display. I don't need fiber optic digital audio inputs. I don't need fucking rows and rows of 20 RCA jack inputs, composite video, component video, S-Video. You'd think I could find a small cheap box the size of an AppleTV that I could just hide somewhere that could do this, but I couldn't find anything sufficient. So I got another $20 gigantic, ugly, old 18-inch receiver again from Craigslist and just leave all those features and inputs unused.

I never understood the "ugly" perception. At worst some might look boring to me, but at best some of them are absolutely beautiful. For example, my favorite in my collection appearance-wise has a 70s-style wooden finish on all but the front plate with a polished silver look on the front plate: https://imgur.com/a/DAUeJJW

This is going to sound kind of sexist, but I have never met a woman who was OK interior design-wise with 18 inch stereo equipment in the living room. I mean look at the OP article: He's got all this stuff hidden away in a closet. This seems to be the only viable way to keep an "A/V stack" full of black boxes and a marriage.

I've got a great sounding 5.1 system with a receiver and a game console and everything set up. You know where it is? My garage.

Is it really love if it hinges on the presence of high quality stereo equipment? Also, I have a friend who has similar stuff out in the open and is happily married.

You’ve either been meeting the wrong women or you need more rooms. One room where people can sit and talk to each other and a completely different room where people can sit and listen to music or watch a screen. Ideally if you want music in that first room you would put a piano in there, because playing the piano (and singing along) is a social activity that people can actually do together. Neither of these activities should be relegated to a garage.

So many problems and more money could solve every one of them!

> You’ve either been meeting the wrong women or you need more rooms.

> So many problems and more money could solve every one of them!

More money isn't going to bring him the right woman. They'll more likely attract an even worse type of woman.

Well, even a gold digger can amicably agree to split the responsibilities for decorating the rooms of the house, if you have enough of them to specialize a little bit.

Some googling found this, but it might be under-powered if you have 8 ohm speakers:

https://www.snapav.com/shop/en/snapav/episode-mini-51-avr-ea...

the only way it could have a smaller back-panel and all of your requirements would be to eliminate the ethernet connector.

The jack is not driving the bookshelf speakers. They're active. They have their own internal amps. It's simple if you use a receiver. If someone can point me to a receiver that's more like 4 inches than 18 inches, then I'd consider that a solution. Receivers are big boxes as far as I've seen. I don't have space. Or maybe I don't want to make space.

https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/amp

Sonos makes this specifically. Has an RCA and HDMI input, along with being a Sonos device for streaming audio.

The only downside is the price.

And that Sonos is terrible to its users.

I had a houseful of overpriced speakers, some only 3 years old when they decided they were too old to support in their rewritten app, or some lazy crap like that.

For GP; I use some cheapo (sub $50) "100W mini amps" from Amazon. They seem fine to me.

Apart from Sonos in general being awful[1][2], their web site seems to be pretty bad, too. Not only is there a modal "subscribe to our newsletter" box in that link, there's also a separate modal cookie warning which blocks the modal newsletter box. It's like frustrating users is core to their mission.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42683753

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21895086

Some of the bigness is just tradition and buyer expectation (big = expensive). But also, modern AVRs are like 1000W devices amplifying 7, 9, even 11 channels of passives. That’s a lot of componentry and corresponding heat to shed— if you open one of those up, it’s not just empty space in there like an NES cartridge or something.

... that said, there is also a small market for "separates" where you have a decoding-only preamp that either feeds active speakers or another box containing just the multi-channel amplification:

https://www.marantz.com/en-ca/category/av-separates/

The output of these units is line-level signals feeding high-impedance loads. They could definitely be a fraction of the size they are.

That makes some sense, but for those of us with two channels maxing out at 25W each, there seems to be some use for a smaller one. I think there are more people on the small end of the spectrum than those with a big surround deployment. I suppose they're mostly using sound bars with an HDMI input.

Have a look at Fosi Audio. I'm currently using a BT30D to drive the passive speakers from an old Samsung integrated amplifier+receiver+2014-era "Smart TV" type system that died. It only has 1 analog input and Bluetooth, but it looks like they have other products in a similar form factor that can take multiple inputs (e.g. the P4 Mini). I was skeptical but needed something cheap to drive those speakers and am quite impressed.

It sounds like your speakers work for you then. On a modern TV without a headphone jack you would probably be served perfectly well by bluetooth speakers that sync to the TV. Though I'm surprised if a 3.5mm output is really that uncommon, because I just bought an LG C1 a few years ago and it has one. You can also find a small bluetooth receiver that would output to a headphone jack at WalMart.

Fosi ZD3 (https://fosiaudio.com/products/fosi-audio-zd3-fully-balanced...). Supports HDMI with CEC. I turn on my Apple TV, it turns on the TV, which in turn turns on the Fosi DAC - all connected with HDMI. The DAC then turns on a ZA3 amp via 12v trigger cable. Volume control etc is via the Apple remote.

All very cheap really. Total cost I think was about $550 (refurbished TV, second hand Apple TV, new Fosi DAC and amp). All this and I get to keep the TV in 'dumb' mode. Never even use the TV remote.

> If someone can point me to a receiver that's more like 4 inches than 18 inches

S.M.S.L. make some good ones: https://www.smsl-audio.com/portal/product/index

I use their AD-18 and really love it: https://www.smsl-audio.com/portal/product/detail/id/566.html

Depends on what he means by 'bookshelf'. I've still got these collecting dust in a condo in Germany, where I rarely visit anymore.

https://www.highfidelityreview.com/creative-sbs260-speakers....

Clear and distortion-free. Probably depending on how you drive your line-out, but mine just worked.

Stereo 2.0! (Giggle..)

The room isn't that large, but they really could fill it with sound, or the nearest neighborhood, if put on the balcony on summer evenings :-)

The audio part can still be made to be simple.

Others have mentioned toslink and I'd like to expand upon that.

When you get a new TV and no longer have a headphone jack to plug your powered speakers into, then you can just add a DAC that converts the toslink digital audio that your new TV outputs into the bog-standard line-level analog audio that your speakers understand.

DACs like this are available at all price points.

At the low end of the scale, some are less than $15 -- and they're tiny. If you can't hide it somehow then I might insist that you're not really trying.

And that's it. That's the entire missing link for where we are in 2025, wherein: A new TV will still have a toslink output, and your powered speakers still have an analog input.

(Tomorrow? Who knows, man. We aren't there yet.)

But you’d be left without volume control, or at least from the same remote you control the TV with.

I've successfully set up sound bars with toslink and used the TV's remote to run the volume up and down. Toslink doesn't have to be a fixed level.

If future-TV lacks this functionality: DACs that have remote volume controls are very nearly as inexpensive as those that don't.

Thanks. Those are some helpful search terms.

It's quite hard to know if the DAC is actually decent quality though. I've bought two from Amazon (admittedly at the low price point) and both of them have line noise - one of them even has a ground loop buzz, which surprised me, since it's powered by USB-C. I'm unconvinced that any of the higher price points (that are still within my budget) aren't just these cheapo ones in slightly fancier cases.

My old TV had real analogue out for speakers and it really did sound a lot better than what I've been getting through TOSLink and this cheapo DAC. Same Hi-Fi and speakers. I'm sure the problem could be solved with a more expensive DAC, but which one? How could I know?

I find this is one of those things where it's quite hard for the uninitiated to see through the cloud of 'audiophiles' saying that you must buy gold cables or your audio will sound like garbage, and still getting decent quality audio.

As a broad concept: Cheap, high-function DACs definitely exist.

For instance: Apple-produced headphone adapters for iPhones are inexpensive -- like $10 or so. And inside of that diminutive adapter is buried a whole USB DAC, with a headphone amplifier. It's so seamless and low-cost that some folks think I'm crazy when I tell them this, but they measure great and also work great. (They work great as DAC/headphone amps for PCs, too. Android, not so much: It works, but there's a bug [that will probably never be fixed] relating to volume control and low output level.)

Anyway, I identify as an audiophile. I've spent several decades playing with this stuff, sometimes well beyond the level of "serious hobby." I've made some money doing audio stuff. I've also spent some time in the studio, and in front of the stage, making things sound good.

And I'm practical. I promise you that I can wire up a high-end stereo system with metal coathangers that will sound indistinguishable from something connected using only solid silver Kynar-insulated wire that is jacketed in cloth woven by Benedictine monks from the first cutting of wool from a single virgin albino Bolivian alpaca (for "purity") that has been dyed and imbued with post-civet Kopi Luwak (for "balance"), in any correctly-controlled blind A/B/X test.

Trust your senses. And by that, I mean: If it looks like bullshit, and it smells like bullshit, and it tastes like bullshit, then spit it the fuck out. :)

For sorting inexpensive products that actually work from those that have practical issues like hum or noise: That's what Amazon reviews are for.

But there are some very nice things for sale that aren't stupid-expensive boutique items. Schiit, for example, builds their own designs in the US and charges Buick prices for them instead of Bugatti prices -- and their website shows photos of what the devices look like on the inside, too.

...anyway, ground loops are usually real. Professionally, I've encountered them most-often in residential environments when converting a customer's television into any manner of home theater. 100% of the time I've discovered this, it was because some bonehead grounded the cable TV wire or the satellite dish to some ground that was separate and distinct from the home's electrical ground -- which should never, ever happen.

The loop would show up when we introduced the first bit of gear that had a 3-prong plug into their mix of things that previously only had 2-prong plugs. Adding the AV receiver, the subwoofer, or whatever tied the electrical ground to the stupid ground and current would flow between them, producing noise.

(And USB-C is ground-referenced, so keep that in mind. Toslink, though? That's fiber optic and thus also galvanically isolated.)

> It seems like AV stuff used to be so simple.

> without a bulky expensive receiver box

A "receiver" has been one of the standard options for making bookshelf speakers work for more than 50 years. A receiver is also not expensive. You can get a basic used one for under $100. I paid $30 for a perfectly working 5.1 Denon receiver with HDMI.

Your problem is that you aren't even using "Modern" AV stuff. If you were, your speakers and TV would both have HDMI Arc ports. Arc has been a thing since 2009.

> That's harder than it sounds though because you have to navigate the menu blind using short and long button presses with the one button.

Or you could unplug it and plug it back in.

Why are receivers so big? It's not exactly a money issue. I just don't want the big box.

HDMI Audio Extractor is what you need. Look at OREI.

Perfect! This looks like the one.

Receivers are big because of the amplifiers. AV receivers have to drive lots of channels. They are all 5.1 or 7.1. But stereo receivers are also huge.

I suspect that some of this is tradition because there are small solid state amplifiers. I'm surprised no one has made a small receiver for 2.1 system cause would be pretty common.

If you open a standard sized receiver up, you'll probably see that 50% the space is empty for airflow, 25% of the space is for a large heatsink because they're passively cooled to minimize noise (thus the need for airflow), and 20% of the space is really big capacitors.

They do make half size receivers, but they typically only have half the power output. The space savings comes from removing space for airflow and the heatsink, and using smaller capacitors for less heat and smaller power output.

If you only need 2.1 output and a quarter of the power, there are offerings that are basically the size of the minimum amount of ports: 2 pairs of speaker terminals, a pair of RCA terminals for subwoofer out, a HDMI port, a optical port, and power. But then it's not really a receiver and more just of an amplifier+DAC because they only have one HDMI input/output, having space for multiple HDMI ports or speaker terminals basically increases the size to the offering above.

They're big mostly because consumers demand a lot of big connectors on them.

Also 20% for a big heavy transformer.

Sometimes I see cheap "amplifier only" designs that are about the size of a small 2U rackmount, but then you usually give up a lot of inputs and controls; they seem to be used either as PA amplifiers or as "extra room" units in the weird whole-house audio systems that apparently thousands of people had at one point and all dumped in the Goodwill.

Usually receivers are intended for passive speakers, a lot of the bulk is for housing and cooling amplifiers.

If your speakers are active and don't need an amp, you can use a HDMI audio extractor, those are pretty small (mine is about half the size of my phone)

A receiver has always been a pretty standard part of even really simple AV setups - you can get half decent ones pretty cheap, and then you just run either the HDMI ARC port or the optical/coax digital audio out from your tv to the receiver so that everything you plug into your tv has it's audio go out to the speakers.

I know I could do this. But I don't really have space for a box. And I'd rather not have it.

> How am I supposed to get the audio to the speakers without a bulky expensive receiver box?

You can get a small ARC/eARC audio extractor with RCA or S/PDIF output and use your favorite amplifier or DAC with it.

Yep, I have a bunch of those audio extractors, they're awesome. In my home office setup I even have an HDMI output that's mirrored to several screens and extract audio at various points along the same path (two using the dedicated mini extractor boxes, one just using the headphone out on a monitor).

Correct answer, HDMI audio extractor.

Personally I use an eARC extractor to run S/PDIF to an audio interface (MOTU Ultralite Mk5) and an RPi running camilladsp handles room correction and active crossovers. Overkill at the moment for just a few studio monitors and a sub, but it'll be a great solution when I get around to building some custom speakers.

The MOTU Ultralite Mk5 is a nice piece of hardware and is even at a great price point if you use more than a tiny fraction of its capabilities, but it also costs quite a few times the entire cost of the rest of this system :)

If you just want to get the eARC data, any S/PDIF input (USB or I2S-via-hat) would work just as well at 1/20 of the price :)

I want someone to fudge up a multiple shairplay setup (presumably by claiming multiple IP addresses, as AirPlay 2.0 apparently can’t handle multiple sinks at the same address) that can use a single multichannel interface like the Ultralite Mk5. This would make an excellent multizone audio setup at an entirely reasonable price.

Thankfully there are fun engaged hackery people.

The article here seemed to dive in, look at what was happening, and figure out some altogether decent & not absurd flows. It wasn't "easy", but it also wasn't totally absurd.

I get why you'd whinge & argue for a simple cable. But this was also a wonderful study, that showed steps, that I hope can bring joy & not just derision. That said, I also have no receiver box & rely on headphone out... which my not that old LG C4 has. Also, if that goes away: SPDIF decoder boxes are very cheap!

It's still very simple and you have never needed anything expensive to do so. Stop with the learned helplessness and "being afraid to try a new TV"

I'm not going to buy a TV just to "try" to figure out how to get audio out of it. I mean, I'm sure there must be a way to do this. I've seen a few options in this thread. If I were to buy a TV, I would want to avoid making it more difficult than I have to. To that end, I'd want to figure out specifically how to get audio to the speakers. In my case, they're active bookshelf speakers without HDMI input.

If the only possible way of doing this is with a bulky receiver, I'd feel justified in complaining about modern AV stuff. Not because of the cost, but because of the size.

Anyway, thanks for your input.

Nah man I'm with you. I've gone chest-deep into this pool and still get issues 5-10% of the time with pretty simple use cases. And I've got a top-of-the-line TV and a pretty good receiver. It's maddening that such conceptually simple use cases don't "just work" even when you DO sink hundreds or thousands of dollars on the stuff you're supposed to.

I've solved the problem by slapping myself whenever I catch myself looking at sound bars, receivers etc for the living room.

You can get a WiiM Amp or Ultra with HDMI eARC, but you can go cheaper if optical out is good enough. Many TVs still have that one

I've seen new cheap LG tv-s with horrible port selection while their premium OLEDs have everything necessary (except Displayport).

I had my LG C9 audio via the headphone jack going to amp and it worked fine. On one of the cheaper LGs I set it up similarly with optical cable and a tiny optical->rca converter.

> How am I supposed to get the audio to the speakers without a bulky expensive receiver box?

You can have bookshelf speakers with an integrated amplifier and HDMI-ARC. All you need is an HDMI cable between the TV and the speakers.

I'm not home at the moment, but I'm pretty sure they don't have an HDMI input. I haven't seen speakers that do, except sound bars. I don't like the general premise of sound bars. You either need a subwoofer, or you're limited to too-many too-small drivers.

There are a couple of brands that sell them, that’s what I meant. I prefer bookshelf speakers over a soundbar due to the larger drivers and better stereo separation

Active bookshelf speakers with HDMI Arc input are getting more common. Kanto Ren, Kef LSX II, Klipsch The Fives, Elac Debut ConneX

There's also the compact, simple alternatives to bulky receivers that are becoming available: Wiim amp, Sonos amp, Eversolo play, and the cheaper chinese makers like SMSL and Fosi. Each of those brands has a small device the size of an apple tv that will take an HDMI Arc input, and output an amplified signal to power some passive bookshelf speakers.

It seems you have amplified speakers. The low friction solution is to use a Toslink to RCA/TRS adapter. That will be a bulletproof digital output readily available on many TVs.

Your quest is thankfully unrelated to ARC/CEC.

Find a tiny TPA3255- or TPA3116-based amp. These are class D amplifier chips made by TI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class-D_amplifier

Buy one of these from e.g. Amazon.

Optionally: Throw away/recycle away the supplied chinese noname power supply. Buy a used laptop PSU from a reputable brand locally for cheap instead. I scored a Lenovo 135W/20V laptop PSU for $5 at my local Goodwill equivalent. Solder on a 5.5mm barrel jack connector.

My fav for your use case: Fosi Audio TB10D.

I'm using active bookshelf speakers with integrated amps. They are working fine.

I really dislike this behavior. You presented a problem, but you didn't want a solution. You wanted attention.

I do want a solution. You haven't provided one.

You suggested an amp. The fact that I'm able to use a headphone jack to connect my speakers should tell you I don't need an amplifier. The question posed is how to connect those speakers if I no longer had access to a headphone jack. Currently the headphone jack is working fine.

For what it's worth, here's a comment that seems like it's get a perfect solution for me.

Sorry if I was unclear.

1. His speakers are powered already. He doesn't need an amp. 2. Even if they weren't, how is he supposed to connect to the Fosi without a headphone jack coming out from the TV? The Fosi only has RCA input.

1. That information just arrived as a reply to my comment.

2. "Luckily, I have one of the last remaining TVs with a headphone jack."

TVs seem to expect you to use HDMI-ARC to return sound to the receiver or soundbar. I wonder if there's any HDMI-ARC to audio dongles out there?

Another infuriating issue is TVs with so few HDMI inputs. I have tried many different HDMI switchers and none of them work reliably, so it kind of puts me off of buying a receiver which would also have that function.

Personally, I run a Yinker 4x4 matrix (in: nintendo switch 1, chromecast, mac pro 4.1 I use as a gaming rig, raspberry pi 5, out: projector, TV, pi 5) and am quite happy with it - no outages so far in half a year of uptime.

I desperately need to work with CEC though lol, never had the time to actually test that.

[1] https://www.amazon.de/Yinker-hintergrundbeleuchteter-Unterst...

I’ve mostly had no issues with HDMI through Yamaha receivers and that includes weird things like an OSSC and Framemeister.

On the other hand, HDMI switchers haven’t fared as well. I built a mini console rack with a switch and it doesn’t recognize several devices, even when manually selected.

> Yamaha receivers

In my limited experience, Yamaha handles HDMI-CEC significantly better than Denon/Marantz. As evidenced by the fact that I currently own a Marantz receiver and am reading this page, but back when I owned a Yamaha receiver, I had no need to care about all of this crud. Things somehow worked on the first try! I did not expect that. However, it conditioned me to expect that again with a different receiver (the sources and sinks are the problems, right? the receivers are super well tested because sitting in the middle and passing these commands around is their entire job, right? right?) which was a mistake.

(The actual issue with the Marantz is that it seems to be eating some kind of power-on command from the source, and not passing it on, so the TV never turns on if you try to turn on the receiver or the source. I have no idea how to fix this, short of following in the path of this article.)

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