I am severely hearing impaired. I can hear OK with my hearing aids in most scenarios, but certain movies/TV shows can be very hard for me to hear for some reason. I wind up needing the TV turned up louder than is comfortable for my family. It doesn’t matter whether we’re listening through our surround sound system or the TV speakers, there’s just something about certain scenes/actors that make it difficult to hear. So, I bought a device that lets me stream audio from the TV directly to my hearing aids. It is AMAZING. I can hear more details in the sounds now, and hear dialog MUCH more clearly than in the past. If you can’t tell, I’m SUPER excited about it!
Except that I’ve noticed one problem. The streaming device can take either an optical connection or a stereo input. I know that I can’t connect a stereo output to the headphone jack on my TCL Roku TV (Model A114x) because it will automatically disable the other audio outputs, and one of the main reasons to get the streamer was to hear better when we’re watching TV/movies as a family. So, I decided to go with the optical cable.
When I hook the optical cable up to the TV and streamer while the TV is playing sound, I can’t hear anything out of the streamer. So, I started playing with the sound settings, and I can have the audio output set to Auto, in which case it outputs to ARC and the surround sound, but doesn’t output to optical. If I turn off the surround sound system, the TV plays sound via the TV speakers, but still no audio via the optical.
The only way for me to hear the TV via the streamer is if I manually force the TV to switch the audio to optical. But then it ONLY outputs via the optical, meaning my family can’t hear the TV. So, I have a choice…listen via the streamer and hear well, but watch alone, or listen as a family but only hear some of the dialog.
Does anyone know of a way to get the TV to always output to optical and still output via ARC/the TV speakers as it always has?
