For many music lovers, sound quality is everything, so they equip themselves with all the tools necessary for high-quality reproduction, perhaps by acquiring very expensive speakers and systems. But if we have already placed a Home Theater system next to the TV positioned in the living room or in the living room, perhaps we already have a respectable sound system, we only need to understand how to use it. In fact, in this guide we will show you how to listen to music on TV, with an eye to the quality of the sound that we can obtain and the apps that we can use to listen to any song or album. At the end of the guide we will be so good at reproducing music on TV that we don't need other instruments or other systems.
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1) Connect TV to home theater system
If we intend to listen to music on a modern TV (therefore LCD or similar), we do not use the speakers built into the body: compared to the past, televisions sound much "worse" and the sound will hardly be so balanced as to satisfy even the most demanding ears. So we will absolutely have to have a Home Theater system for playing songs, so that we can listen to music at a higher level (in addition to enjoying it with movies and shows broadcast on TV channels).
A good home theater system that we can use for the purpose is Yamaha YHT-1840 5.1 Home Cinema Kit (€ 307).
A good 5.1 system designed for cinema but which also has advanced features to optimize music playback, including the Compressed Music Enhancer and dedicated DSP (CD) scenes. Once this Home Theater is obtained, we connect all the speakers to their respective rear connectors (we have to fix the copper contacts and insert them in the appropriate slots with terminals) and we use the optical cable to make the connection between the amplifier and the TV.
The fiber optic cable that we can use is identified with the abbreviation TOSLINK or SPDIF; a good cable of this type can be obtained here -> Optical Digital Audio Cable Toslink IVANKY 1, 8 m (7 €).
Once the cable is obtained it is time to connect everything: we identify the optical audio output on the back of the TV and insert one end of the cable.
Now let's go to the amplifier and connect the other end of the cable on the back, identifying the optical audio input.
We are done, we will only have to connect the power, turn on the system and the TV and check that the audio passes correctly to the speakers.
If we don't hear any sound from the new system, we will have to check in the settings of the TV if the optical audio output is turned on (we could also find it as SPDIF Out ).
If our TV is equipped with an HDMI port with ARC, the connection via optical cable is not necessary; we identify the HDMI ARC port on the back of the TV.
We use a latest generation HDMI cable on the latter port; a good HDMI cable that can support all the expected standards is available here -> AmazonBasics - High speed HDMI 2.0 cable (€ 6).
Once connected one end of the HDMI cable to the specific ARC port, let's go to the back of the amplifier and connect the cable to the HDMI OUT (ARC) port.
The system allows you to pass the audio using this cable: the TV sound will go back to the amplifier, without using other cables.
2) Connect the smartphone to the TV
Now that our home theater is connected to the TV, we will have to find a way to get our favorite songs played on it. The easiest method involves the use of dongle devices such as the Chromecast: it connects to one of the free HDMI ports of the TV, it joins our home wireless network and is ready to receive any type of music video or audio track from services compatible streams (such as Spotify).
To deepen the discussion we can read our guide -> Chromecast guide with 18 tricks and applications to use it at its best .
Alternatively we can use Miracast to make the connection between smartphone and TV, but in this case the screen will be shared on the TV together with the audio (therefore system sounds, notification sounds and calls will also appear), ruining the experience audio. If our TV is not Wi-Fi or we want to use other alternatives to Chromecast, we invite you to read our guide to alternatives to Chromecast to see web content on TV .
If we love Apple devices, we can also use Apple TV to send the streaming stream to the TV: on this topic we have created a special guide accessible from here -> When is the Apple TV 4K convenient .
3) Use music apps on Smart TV
And if we don't want to use the smartphone to listen to music on the TV ">
Once the Spotify app has been downloaded, open it and log in with the account we have; alternatively we can also speed up the association to our account by opening the Spotify app on our smartphone (with access already made), starting playback of any song, selecting available Devices below and finally clicking on the TV icon Smart (visible with the inscription Spotify Connect ).
The Spotify app on Smart TV will automatically receive the credentials and start playing the songs selected on the phone.
If we don't want to use the phone, we can always navigate the menus of the app and select our playlists, our preferences and start searching for new songs, albums or stations. To get the best audio quality, in order to exploit the system we have made properly, we recommend subscribing to a Premium subscription to Spotify, which will unlock the highest quality of all the songs (with the basic free account the songs they are more compressed, therefore of a lower quality).
READ ALSO -> Advantages of Spotify Premium to listen and download music without limits
Other apps similar to Spotify that you can use to listen to music on TV are Youtube, Amazon Prime Music (free in a limited version for those who subscribe to Amazon Prime) and TuneIn, to listen to radio stations
4) Connect other audio devices
In addition to the apps and streaming services seen so far, we can listen to music by connecting other audio playback devices to the amplifier of the Home Theater system, such as CD players, DVD players and turntables .
If our playback devices support HDMI, just connect them to one of the HDMI IN ports on the back of the amplifier and select the right source on the amplifier.
The audio will pass to the speakers, while any video will be played on TV.
If instead our devices do not support HDMI, we can still use the audio connectors on the back of the amplifier: in the model chosen for the guide we will have 2 RCA inputs (red and white plugs) and two coaxial digital audio inputs.
In this way we can connect any modern audio source or a few years ago without any problem.
READ ALSO -> 7 music services without limits and on demand from PC and smartphone
