Xbox Series X audio delay through eARC

As the Xbox One X is an audio source, it doesn't need to send or receive audio via ARC or eARC.

Audio Return Channel is only for TV's that are supposed to "return" Audio back to an AV receiver or connected Soundbar.

As the Xbox One X doesn't have speakers to play audio recieved through ARC, it won't support "ARC" or "eARC". Your TV needs to support ARC or eARC.

What exactly is your TV and console setup, that you would need eARC in the Xbox One X?

After a lot of test, to solve it i plug xbox on my lg cx with option sync AV arc bypass and activate earc with my denon 1600h.

If earc is off there is a big audio delay but my denon receive an atmos emulated (pcm) for all game, If earc on no delay atmos OK on halo, forza etc... But no atmos on ubisoft game same as farcry 6.

Ubisoft game not really atmos but a dolby 7.1 sound ?

My conclusion If xbox use dolby atmos emulation or no earc there is a delay, if earc activate no delay but only atmos with game compatible

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.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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!!!!

Hello AnchelLabena,

We appreciate you for bringing this up to Xbox Forum.

We are sorry to hear that you’re experiencing audio delay when using Dolby Atmos for Home Cinema on your Xbox Series X with LG OLED C2 TV and Samsung Q950T Dolby Atmos soundbar.

We've found similar issues with LG OLED and LG Atmos soundbar (with rear speakers) and used an earc extractor (4k Dolby Atmos compatible) which completely solved the problem. You pass the audio HDMI earc out from the TV through the extractor and into the HDMI in of your sound bar.

Another user, states having delays using the Xbox Series X with Dolby Atmos games and apps such as Youtube and Gears 5 but NOT from the Dolby Atmos app’s demos. The Xbox is connected directly to their LG BX TV via the HDMI 2.1 and using eARC > ARC on their Onkyo TX-NR656. The TV’s apps do not cause this delay using Atmos, and the Dolby App on the Xbox.

We also found an explanation from another that the delay exists because natively, surround audio from a gaming console is in LPCM. To output a bit streaming format (or in this case a proprietary PCM codec like DOLBY MAT 2.0) it has to re-encode the audio real-time which introduces delay. And keep in mind ONLY a very select few games are in Atmos.

It's good to know that connecting the Series X directly to the soundbar works just fine and Atmos content will play as intended with no delay. However, this causes a loss in other features such as VRR, 120 Hz and more due to the soundbar not supporting all HDMI 2.1 features.

We understand that you want to do the setup with the console connected directly to the TV, as should be intended. We hope that the information we provided is helpful.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please let us know.

We will be glad to follow up and help you.

Sincerely,



Moderator

Microsoft Community

Update, I disabled eARC and HDMI ON to OFF on the Denon receiver. And on the TV, I also disabled eARC. On the Xbox series X I disabled CEC and ever since then I haven't had an issue with the audio. I did notice when I enabled CEC on the Xbox, and choosing Dolby Atmos I lost audio intermittently, so I just left CEC off. Unfortunately I have to use 3 controllers to turn everything on now. Now I can choose different audio formats with no audio loss.