The LG CX is the best TV you can get for gaming right now. It supports the new HDMI 2.1 standard, offers a ton of gaming-centric features, and has an excellent OLED display. However, it’s not the most straightforward TV to use in history. The most confusing thing I’ve encountered is turning on eARC on the LG CX, but I figured it out over the course of about an hour. Fortunately, I put in the work, so you don’t have to, so read on to figure out how to activate eARC on your LG OLED TV.
Why isn’t eARC working on my LG CX TV?
One of the coolest things about eARC is that you can finally stop worrying about what HDMI ports you’re using when it comes to audio (video is another story). If you’re like me, you’ve spent years dealing with upsets between your TV and your A/V receiver. With eARC, TVs can finally send 5.1 and 7.1 Multi-Channel PCM to a receiver, making the process of hooking everything up a lot simpler.
Unfortunately, getting eARC activated on an LG CX series TV isn’t very intuitive. If you’ve hooked up a device to your TV’s HDMI port and find that it’s still facing the same limitations it did with regular ARC, then you’ve probably missed one or more steps in turning on eARC.
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To turn on eARC on an LG CX TV:
- Turn on SIMPLINK. This can be done by:
- Following the directions during your TV’s first-time setup process.
- Heading to All Settings -> Connection -> Device Connection Settings
- Change your Sound Out to HDMI ARC
- Go to All Settings -> Sound -> Additional Settings and turn on eARC.
- Under All Settings -> Sound -> Additional Settings -> Digital Sound Out select “Pass Through”
If you’ve followed the instructions above, your TV should output sound directly to your A/V receiver with no processing. This will give you the best sound quality possible. Additionally, in addition to passing PCM, the settings above will also pass lossy surround formats like Dolby and DTS.
