I’ve been testing an HDMI audio extractor with the RetroTINK 4K, that takes HDMI-in and splits between an HDMI-out, Audio-Only HDMI-Out, as well as SPDIF, Toslink and 3.5mm analog audio output. It’s PS3-compatible and so far has done a great job passing all the formats I sent it, including Dolby Atmos. I have not had the opportunity to try 4K120 sources, but it’s worked flawlessly with 4K60 and below. More details after the link, but as this is an Amazon purchase, feel free to try it with your setup and just return it within the listed period if it doesn’t work how you hoped – More thoughts after the link:
Purchase Here: https://amzn.to/45BdRBZ
Alternate Link: https://amzn.to/3OXCYrX
(check both to see which is cheaper)
First, I purchased this as a way to send all audio formats to my AVR, while also passing both audio and video to the RetroTINK 4K; It’s HDMI-in is limited to which audio formats it’s compatible with and definitely won’t support the most modern formats like Dolby Atmos. In this scenario, it worked perfectly. I didn’t spend too much time testing the other audio outputs, as the focus was really just on HDMI audio separation. As a note, the main output still passes audio, so for stereo sources you can still just use your TV’s speakers if you’d like.
I think this device might be a great way to pass Atmos to AVR’s that can accept that audio format, but are limited to 4K30; I sold my previous (awesome) amp that had limited HDMI ports and I bet this would have been a great solution. I have no way to test and confirm though.
For the RT4K, I think an HDMI Matrix Switch might actually be a better overall choice and if you don’t need HDMI 2.1 you can find them about the same price as this. The topic of HDMI extractors that output HDMI-only audio often comes up, so I wanted to share this – I imagine there’s someone reading this that will find it the perfect solution for their setup! For more info on HDMI devices I’ve personally tested, check out this video below:
