Tendak HDMI Audio Extractor, 4K 30Hz HDMI Audio Splitter to Optical TOSLINK SPDIF + 3.5mm Stereo Audio Adapter, Compatable for TV, PC, PS3/4/5, Blu-ray/DVD/HD Player

My wife has hearing issues so she wears Sennheiser wireless headphones when we watch TV while I don't. If she is watching alone it is nice if she can mute the sound from our AV receiver and then listen with her headphones. Otherwise, I can hear it all over the house. I struggled to find a way to connect the headphones so we could watch our DirecTV, Roku, and Blue Ray in this manner. I called Sennheiser and they were no help at all. I searched the web and found a lot of discussion about this problem but no solutions. After a lot of research I worked out a method using these Tendak boxes between the HDMI sources (Roku, etc.) and the AV receiver. This allows me to mute the sound at the AV receiver and still hear with the headphones that have their own volume control. I route the sound output through a 4-port audio switch to the headphones. I just connected it all together today and it works great. Having to switch the audio switch box manually is a minor inconvenience. The Tendak boxes came with RCA to 3.5mm cables (which I needed) and micro USB power cables (which I didn't need). I keep the boxes switched to 2-chan and have not had any problem. The sound from all of my sources comes to the headphones just fine. Other competing boxes seemed to indicate that 5.1 sound would not be converted to 2-chan. In the question section the seller said that the Tendak would convert to 2-chan. I can't tell if my sources are sending 5.1 sound or not (I assume they are). All I know is that it works. Thanks Tendak.Update 11/30/2016: I found that some Roku channels (HBO Now for one) send audio in a format that the Tendak box cannot decode. So, no audio from those channels. I went in to the Roku setup and changed the output to 2 channel stereo. Now the headphones are working with all Roku channels but my home theater sound is not as good. I will live with it for now and see if it bothers me.

I am giving this 5 stars as it works exactly as it should, but, not for my purposes so it was returned. The product 100% extracted the audio and passed a full signal to all the two connected devices, however, I had wanted this to be able to connect to my TV and to my home theater receiver in order to get the audio into my receiver in 5.1 surround yet still have stereo input to my TV for times that I did not want to use the receiver (which is most of the time in my household unless I am the one watching something, everyone else in the house is fine with stereo and the TV speakers). I was unable to make this device work to do that in the fashion I needed.The AppleTV4 is just too smart. It senses what devices are connected via HDMI and then adjusts the output from the ATV4 to accommodate. Since the only device that is connected via HDMI using this product is the TV, the ATV4 downgrades all the audio to stereo, so all I get to the receiver is stereo as well, no 5.1 at all (and, yes, I tried all the modes).My receiver has pass-through mode which works, but, everyone in the household complains about all the buttons required to get sound to the TV using that method (change TV input to receiver, then change AV input to the HDMI in from the Apple TV). For many of us these few keystrokes are not a problem but for my household they want to turn on the TV, switch the input to the HDMI for the ATV4 and then be done with no receiver remote involved. This won't help you with that for reasons shown.Perhaps some newer TVs have full 5.1 processing capability but my Panasonic Plasma does not, so, the issues I stated could not be overcome with this product. If your TV will receive a full 5.1 signal and process it perhaps your experience will be different.

Using this splitter with a Gen4 AppleTV, non-4K. After a lot of fine tuning, the device is finally doing what it’s supposed to. Out of the box, it wasn’t clear if the external power cable is needed for the splitter to function properly. So far, the AppleTV seems to provide sufficient power via HDMI. Next, I set the audio switch to 5.1 to get a Dolby Digital signal to my receiver via the optical cable. The reciever would only recognize a non-digital ProLogic signal, the sound level was noticeably low and certain frequencies were missing. Music and some effects came through but voices were completely absent. Moving the switch did nothing. I discovered that I had to adjust the audio format setting within the AppleTV from its default of “best available” to 5.1 specifically. The audio noticably improved but still wasn’t full. I moved the splitter switch to the “pass” setting which filled in the gaps and finally the sound felt correct. According to the instructions, the “pass” setting shouldn’t work this way but it did for me in this case.