What are you connecting to? Just a sound bar or a home theater sound system with a receiver? I generally make it easy and use HDMI cable. But it is just as good with an optical cable. Many times you can find HDMI cables cheaper than optical. Those are the only 2 options I use with current technology.

We use HDMI and have also used Optical, but I've found HDMI to work better, especially with the sound system we have. Our sound system is 5.1 - we decided that 7.1 was overkill and we really did not have places to put the extra speakers.

Raven, we're connecting to our new Samsung 65" smart tv and nothing else.

Lars, that was one of the things I read that the HDMI is better for some things, like Blue Ray players.

Appreciate the comments! Always can count on getting a quicker response here. Thanks

I use HDMI on my home theater, 5.2.4 setup. That's 5 surrounds, 2 subwoofers and 4 Dolby Atmos speakers in ceiling. My suggestion is use HDMI if all devices are compatible.

If you're interested in using one remote, you'll need HDMI ARC to control all devices with one remote.

Michael, both the tv and sound system have an HDMI ARC connection. As I understand it, the cable is a regular HDMI cable, but needs to be connected to the HDMI port.

Correct. HDMI ARC from Receiver to TV ARC. The next step is making sure HDMI is switched on at the Receiver and the TV.

Samsung is the one of the contrary brands when it comes to HDMI CEC compatibility.

You're munging unrelated and different things together.

What will dictate what connectors you use is what kind of connectors your hardware has sockets for.

Both HDMI and Toslink (optical) are for digital transport. There's no quality of a digital signal, it either arrives or it doesn't (binary situation). An electron doesn't know what kind of wire it's passing through. Buy the cheapest HDMI cable you can find, both Amazon and cables.com offer good choices.

And yes, so-called HDMI-Arc is for using a common remote, which may or may not be an important objective for you. I don't worry or bother with it myself.

Don't be shy about using analog connections (the kind with so-called RCA plugs) if part of the connection system needs it. They work fine.

How many speakers you have determine the sound experience you have. A "surround" system with multiple speakers in front and behind will produce a surround experience. Not all movie sources people watch at home provide a true surround signal. When a stereo signal is put through a surround receiver, it produces a surround experience of sorts by processing the audio in a limited way. Much of the audio for in-home movies isn't that terrific anyway so it's easy to overkill the hardware for what ultimately may be mediocre sound sources. It's true that a poor system won't produce a faithful delivery of an excellent source but an excellent system fed a poor signal can only do so much with what it has.

Some people have undiscerning ears and, to exaggerate, find no difference between a car radio and a stereo system. Or between a cheap stereo system and an excellent one. Even those who care may like so many others lose hearing acuity as they age. So don't sweat what you're doing, you may very well not hear the difference between something mid-range or better and something cheap.

Michael, can you contact me through me email in my profile? I have a couple of other questions I'd like to ask. Thanks

secsteve,

Sure, but I don't see your email.

Michael, well ain't that a kick in the head? When did they make email private? I can't keep up with the changes they make.

I had a question about the CEC, but after much searching (and a couple of calls) found the answer to my question.

Appreciate your input. Went with the HDMI and so far, so good. Really was a piece of cake.

Thanks.