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Question

Sennheiser RS 170 Setup - Please Help

Mar 6, 2015 4:00AM PST

I recently purchased a pair of RS 170's and have spent hours trying to set them up, to no avail.

I currently have a Samsung TV, Samsung HT Blue Ray player (Surround Sound), and a Verizon Fios Box.

The Samsung HT box has no Audio out ports.

Current setup is:

Samsung HT Box HDMI Out --> TV
Verizon Fios --> Samsung HT Box via HDMI In

Without engaging the Samsung HT Box, I can't use the headphones for blue ray or netflix.

Is there a way to make this work, or not possible?

I am a newbie to audio.... Any help would be appreciated.

Discussion is locked

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Clarification Request
Has anyone mentioned optical to analog boxes?
Mar 6, 2015 4:25AM PST

Samsung, your audio/TV dealer should have these on the tip of their tongues.
Bob

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Not sure what you mean...
Mar 6, 2015 5:46AM PST
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Sure if that's how you want to solve it.
Mar 6, 2015 6:02AM PST
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I would like to solve it...
Mar 6, 2015 8:43AM PST

the cheapest and most efficient way possible. I just went to radio shack, and bought a digital to analog converter which connected to my TV's optical out port, and that did not work...

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That would not work without some changes.
Mar 6, 2015 10:28AM PST

But first, the most common oversight is forgetting to pull the caps off the ends of the optical cable.

After that we must set the audio to Optical (natch) and then Stereo and/or PCM since these little decoders know little else.

After that we find we may have to pump that into an amplifier but for headphones should be audible.

-> Finally, if the TV speakers are working, it's not setup right.
Bob

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Keep in mind...
Mar 6, 2015 11:49AM PST

Currently, the audio only comes out of the home theatre speakers, not the internal TV speakers. Could that be causing my issue?

Appreciate the help.

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Yes.
Mar 6, 2015 11:38PM PST

It's not setup right yet. I can't go over the dozen variations on the them here but will try.

Your HT system would need a headphone jack for that use.
Bob

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Please
Mar 7, 2015 1:23AM PST

Let me know the proper setup to have it all work. Thank you.

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For HEADPHONE use.
Mar 7, 2015 3:00AM PST

Now it would be debatable if this is right for all but all sources need to go a central place for this to work.

One example is "sources to HDTV" and the usual optical to analog for headphone use.

Now this falls apart for folk that want the TV speakers on at the same time as the headset. For that we get an audio Y cable and hook up headphones and a speaker bar or other amplified speakers. This one can be very annoying as volume control for the speakers are rarely on the same remote.

That's just one setup.

For this unknown Samsung HT system, it may be a bad selection for this setup as some don't have headphone jacks or a way to route sound from HDTV back to the HT.

All this shows how bad the stores and makers perform on setup. Unless you pay. Best Buy has a home theater group just for such setups when folk can't figure it out on their own.
Bob

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I got it to work
Mar 8, 2015 9:40AM PDT

Below is the setup, which allows the headphones to work with the, HT, TV, and Blue rays/netflix:

Samsung HT from HDMI out to TV
Cable box via HDMI to TV
Optical from TV to Samsung HT

Everything seems to be working fine. For some reason, the soap opera effect seems to be in place, but I will look in the TV setup to remove that.

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For others, tell one last thing.
Mar 8, 2015 9:45AM PDT

Where do the headphones plug in?