How to set up a soundbar for your PS5

How to gear up upward a soundbar for your PS5

(Image credit: Tom'southward Guide)

Setting up your PS5 console to piece of work with a soundbar is but as worthwhile as doing the same for a Idiot box. Fifty-fifty the inexpensive soundbars will be a sonic upgrade on the congenital-in speakers of most TVs, and this volition give in-game effects and soundtracks the weight they deserve. Imagine more impactful gunfights with booming explosions, or more dramatic racing with truly roaring engines.

The PS5 supports the five.1 and vii.ane surround sound formats too, and the Series X even supports Dolby Atmos in certain games. It'southward clear, so, that both consoles are best played with one of the all-time soundbars, peculiarly 1 that can produce surround sound. Here'due south how to set up your console upwards to get home theater-quality sound on the PS5.

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How to set up a soundbar on the PS5

How to set up a soundbar for PS5 and Xbox Series X — (Image credit: JBL)

There are three ways to connect a PS5 to both your Television and a soundbar at the same time. The first requires both a Idiot box and a soundbar with HDMI ARC (audio render channel) support:

1. Connect the PS5 to the soundbar using both devices' HDMI ports.

2. Using an ARC-uniform HDMI port on the TV, use a second HDMI cable to connect the Television to the soundbar'due south HDMI ARC port.

This uses the passthrough capability of ARC to send the video signal from your PS5 through the soundbar and into the TV.

If you don't have the requisite ARC hardware, you can instead connect the PS5 to your TV:

1. Connect the PS5 to the TV via HDMI.

2. Connect the soundbar to the TV using an optical cable.

Finally, if your soundbar and Television both support the upgraded eARC (enhanced sound render channel), you can use the steps of the second method but connect your Tv to your soundbar with an HDMI cable, instead of an optical one. Just make sure you're plugged into eARC-enabled HDMI ports at both ends.

These two-cable setups will do the basic chore of playing game sound through your soundbar. But if you want total environment sound, y'all'll need to brand a trip into the PS5'south settings.

Navigate to the Sound settings menu and select Audio Output. Select the HDMI Device Type every bit "AV Amplifier" — this might seem strange when there's a dissever "Sound Bar" option available, but you lot'll need the sometime option for true surround audio.

Making this selection will present yous with new options for selecting the number of speakers yous have. From in that location you can use the Adjust Speaker Positions to gear up the angle of each speaker: you're more or less making a diagram of your sound hardware setup, so make certain you lot set each speaker position relative to where they are in the room.

Finally, return to the Audio Output menu and scroll down to Audio Format (Priority). Gear up this to Dolby or DTS if your PS5 is continued to your TV, or Linear PCM if the console is connected directly to your soundbar. Ta-da: you tin now savor environs sound in PS5 games.

Enabling surround audio for Blu-ray playback requires one more than footstep, though it does besides enable Dolby Atmos — the PS5 doesn't support this enhanced format for games or streamed video, but it's bachelor for Blu-rays if yous're connected using HDMI ARC or eARC. Atmos doesn't work over optical connections.

Start playback of your Blu-ray, then use the Options button on your DualSense controller to open the settings bill of fare. Set up the Audio Format option every bit "Bitstream" and surroundings sound, including Atmos, should kick in.

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James is currently Hardware Editor at Rock Newspaper Shotgun, just earlier that was Sound Editor at Tom'due south Guide, where he covered headphones, speakers, soundbars and annihilation else that intentionally makes dissonance. A PC enthusiast, he also wrote calculating and gaming news for TG, normally relating to how hard it is to find graphics bill of fare stock.