[cloudsrest]

Hi all,

Here's my situation/annoyance/problem:

I have cheap Toshiba (FireTV edition), and an even cheaper Vizio 2.1 sound bar with no HDMI inputs (only optical/3.5mm/RCA/Bluetooth), Xbox One X, and an Amazon Echo Show 8 in my living room. I use the Echo to control everything with voice commands as well as for 100% of my music-listening needs. That said, my present signal flow is as follows: TV audio>Echo via Bluetooth>sound bar via 3.5mm aux; Xbox>TV via HDMI. With this setup I'm able to hear everything I watch on the TV through the sound bar without switching inputs, AND I can hear Alexa + MUSIC (important) from the Echo whether the TV is on or off.

The problem is that my TV doesn't let me adjust the audio latency on any of the inputs, so the Xbox audio ends up annoyingly out if sync with the video.

I realize that it may be time for a component upgrade, although my budget is currently quite limited (thanks covid19!). Still, any recommendations allowing continued use of the Echo Show as a music player (I like to see what's playing), while requiring minimal manual input switching would be massively appreciated!

I'm definitely willing to go outside the box to make this work. If anyone knows of a sound bar or receiver that has something along the lines of an always-on mic input that I could plug the Echo into, that would be cool. I'm also not opposed to DIY options/suggestions. Go wild.

Thanks for taking the time to read all that :/

Happy isolation!

 

[rgoebel]

Try using the Xbox thru the built-in TV speakers. If the delay is gone (or significantly less), the delay is likely the bluetooth part of the equation. every time an analog signal has to be encoded or decoded to a digital signal, there will be added latency. So your Xbox sends a digital signal to the tv, which likely re-encodes (to a different CODEC) to go thru bluetooth. The Echo decodes it to analog, which is then passed to the soundbar. I'm guessing the Echo doesn't have any line inputs... so you are going to have to make a change to the hardware somewhere along the line.

 

[cloudsrest]

Thanks for the response! Oh yeah, there's no latency if I use the TV's built-in speakers, or connect the TV directly to the sound bar. Surprisingly, the Bluetooth isn't where the the majority of the delay arises. It's introduced when the Echo converts the digital signal to analog via the AUX jack. None of this is a recent discovery, that's why I'm looking for hardware recommendations from you nice people

So far, the best option I've come up with on my own is to pick up either a second sound bar or a set of small speakers+sub specifically for the Echo. It's definitely not the most elegant solution, but it's the only one I've got at this point. I wish there was an AVR with a dedicated mic input (for karaoke maybe?).