If you read between the lines, you'll probably detect that there are two fundamental differences in all of our equipment setups: either WITH or WITHOUT an AVR involved. This is very critical in planning out how everything in your system is interconnected. Adding an A16 and possible DAC, and possible headphone amp, this obviously complicates how things are cabled together even further, but it's the presence or absence of an AVR which is probably the biggest single design factor.
If you have an AVR then you tend to route things through it as the "central hub". And then video out of the AVR goes to one input of the TV. Audio from speakers is handled by the AVR. The A16 is an INPUT device into the AVR, and multiple A/V sources would be fed into the A16 for headphone-delivered audio. Video from the A/V sources is passed through the A16 to the AVR, and then on to the TV. Some variations on this simple straightforward theme are common as well, for odd or unusual situations, but basically this is what a diagram would look like.
Any setup that does NOT involve an AVR and speakers would involve using the multiple source HDMI inputs of a TV as the "hub", perhaps with speaker sound coming from the internal TV speakers or maybe from a soundbar fed via ARC/eARC from the TV. Or, perhaps the soundbar is the source hub, into which sources are at fed and out of which the TV is connected. Again, the A16 is arranged either into the soundbar or TV, or perhaps out of the TV via ARC/eARC.
Or, perhaps the A16 itself is the primary "hub", feeding video to the TV. Optional use of a soundbar is just a bit more complicated, but the essence here is to feed A/V sources directly into the A16 which makes primary headphone listening very straightforward.
Our A16 world is not simple.
