If you connected the TV's eARC port to one of the A16's HDMI input ports, you don't understand how eARC works. Connect the A16's OUTPUT port to the TV eARC port.

You should also be able to get bitstream Atmos from a properly configured Windows machine. However I'm not sure if Apple Music on Windows works with that. You may need a different content source. The absolutely best quality you'll get from Blu-ray Audio but you'll need a dedicated Blu-ray player...

You can't get bitstream Atmos from a Mac. The Mac will always decode the audio before sending it out. You should get an Apple TV 4K instead (and remember to turn lossless on - it's quite hidden). However, to get improved experience from the Mac, you should set the primary output device to the...

I would try using another Ethernet cable, and if possible with your gear, maybe isolate the port from the rest of your network (use a VLAN for example). Since it sounds like they have perhaps a custom software networking implementation, maybe it's getting overwhelmed with random broadcast...

In an ideal world you would contact Smyth and they'd sort it out as it's their package. I suggest you try that and hopefully they don't ignore you. I would guess they've used an inaccurate HS code. When mine arrived, I forget the exact HS code but it was for some sort of parts instead of an...

Of course it would be possible, with base64 or similar encoding.

It's probably just a specialized model for music or movie production where they use the Dolby Renderer. They won't be sending bitstream audio so they don't need HDMI. And they wouldn't use USB over Dante.

None? Just use the A16

You won't get any DTS variant that way on any LG CX, C1 and C2 year models but if you don't care about that it's no big deal. Some of them also botch multichannel PCM though. eARC is great in theory but in practice it's a bad idea to leave the TV in control of anything audio related. Sadly...

You could use an HDMI matrix or splitter which may be simpler and more reliable. However depending on what your AVR supports you may want to manually construct a combined EDID that works best with your devices, and that can be a bit daunting for a first timer.

Do you also experience distortion with the test music (that you can activate from the remote)? And did the manloud adjustment also sound a bit weird during adjustments? If so, you might have to send the unit back for the infamous "simple soldering fix", that's what happened in my case anyway...

Optical is able to transmit lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS signals on supporting hardware. Almost no Hi-Fi DACs support these. Lossless, you only get 2ch PCM.

You can't get more than 2ch PCM out of any optical output. That's the way optical/toslink/spdif is.

In my experience the optical outputs don't work in AV (speaker) mode. I tried to use them for a stereo downmix in the past with AV mode on but they were not active. Is it possible that you don't have the A16 set to headphone mode?

I don't think the latter is true. All versions should do 4k60 18Gbps.

And I thought I had a complex setup :)

You probably mean the DAC 8 stereo because the pro only has USB and AES.

You could try something like https://www.orei.com/products/4k-hdmi-audio-extractor-arc-earc-auto-edid-management-hda-929, or potentially the cheaper...

No, zero preorders shipped. Read back if you need more info (not that there is much though). There's nothing you can say that hasn't been said dozens of times already.

While you should use a powered splitter, switcher or matrix, I'm having trouble understanding what exactly you tried to achieve. And I'm saying this as someone who has very deep and complex HDMI chains. Maybe try explaining what exactly it is that you want to do, and what you tried to do...

Sort of off topic but I got the Virtuoso software for my laptop. It does produce a pretty convincing base layer. I am once again unable to hear a difference between the base layer and the top layer though (an issue I also have with the Realiser). I guess my ears are weirder than I thought. But...

That's correct but it's not really a big deal. On macOS it's set up as a 16ch aggregate device and one of the dac8 is the master clock. The other one has drift correction enabled. I don't have any problems with this. However, since the dac8 in AES/USB mode uses the clock signal it recovers from...

Exactly

Not very useful if you already have a surround setup. It might be interesting to try but basically that would mean not taking advantage of the actual speakers you have. Additionally if you only need 2ch, then the Realiser already has output options for that, including a downmix output (which may...

An ARC/eARC port such as that on the unit you linked is an output port (ARC/eARC flows from display to source which is reverse direction), and won't be able to act as an input port. You would not be able to connect the Realiser's HDMI output to it.