Sony Z9f sound bar and Xbox one S

Olov,

I am not sure what the actual fix is here, however there are some things you can look at to see if it is the cause.

First make sure that your TV and sound bar are connected via whichever port is labeled as the ARC (Audio Return Channel) input. In addition to this, ensure the HDMI cable supports ARC.

Second check to see if Apple TV and the Xbox are fighting over control of the inputs. You can disable the HDMI-CEC function on the TV and see if the issue resolves itself. Generally, if I recall correctly, this is a per port setting with the TV on ports
that use the CEC function. Try turning CEC off on one or both HDMI ports on the TV and see if this fixes your issue. If your sound bar also has HDMI-CEC settings then that may be the culprit.

HDMI-CEC allows devices connected to your TV through HDMI ports to communicate back and forth with your TV. The devices can have some control
over the TV, and the TV can have some control over the devices. This means you could control your Blu-ray player through your TV remote, for example. Or devices can automatically change your TV’s input when they need to do something.

Also if have not done so, I generally advise firmware updates of both the TV and soundbar. Often these updates will include compatibility fixes.

Do you have the HDMI settings on the xbox set to control the tv to switch it off and on? If so, that signal could be interfering when you try and switch between the inputs on thr soundbar.

Scrap that try plugging the sound bar into the xbox on HDMI out

I'm no expert but shouldn't the sound bar be plugged into the tv only since I'm assuming you listen to game volume through your tv, so the tv will play the game volume through the sound bar. although I could be wrong. Let me know if it works.

Updated:

I found that my soundbar SONY HT Z9F soundbar use HDMI 2.0 of which bandwidth is 18gbs connect to my TV using eARC port, so I changes my HDMI to

8K HDMI of which soundbar is 48gbs, and the delay improve a lot that it is hard to notice now.

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I have tested. My set is

TV has enable eARC and set sound passthrough, HDMI BITSTREAM. XBOX SERIES allows PASSTHROUGH.

XBOX SERIES X --> LG 65 QNED90 --> SONY HT Z9F (eARC)

there is very noticeable delay on Atmos but don't have delay on any uncompressed sound like 5.1 or 7.1

XBOX SERIES X --> SONY HT Z9F (eARC) --> LG 65 QNED90

the atoms sound is sync with image, but I got a ton of delay on controller input, so I set TV image mode to Game Optimize,

and set game mode to FPS, the controller input delay is gone, but now, i got atoms delay back...

By the way, because my TV doesn't support DTS - X PASSTHROUGH, so when I connect XBOX to my soundbar, I could enable DTS X, and DTS X is working perfectly and there is no any delay comparing to Dolby Atmos.

Razer Blade 15 with RTX 2070 MAX Q --> LG 65 QNED90 --> SONY HT Z9F (eARC)

I don't have any input or atmos sound delay in this set.

So here is conclusion:

xbox series x has issue to passthrough Atmos content, even thought it is directly connect to sound bar, the sound or TV try to delay image to sync with atmos sound which causes a ton of input delay. But once you set the TV into low legacy input mode to get rid of input delay, the Atmos sound delay will be back.

And Razer blade 15 with RTX 2070 MAX Q which is PC is perfectly working at Atmos without any issue.

So this is definitely XBOX SERIES X ISSUE!!!!