[Tina M]

Quick question before I order one. My TV only has two HDMI ports and one is already used by my soundbar. Can I plug the Qinux BitBip 89 into the other port and still get audio through the soundbar, or do I need to switch cables every time? Not super techy so just want to make sure it works without a hassle.

[Sarah Kos]

I run mine into the TV and the sound comes out of the soundbar fine, no cable swapping needed. The TV just passes the audio along like it does with anything else plugged in. Takes about ten seconds to set up and you’re done.

[Priya Shah]

Two HDMI ports is tight, so I get the concern. A friend of mine had the same setup with a retro stick and a soundbar, and what tripped him up was where the sound actually comes from. If the stick is plugged straight into the TV, the TV handles the handoff to the soundbar, and in his case it worked right away. What he did have to check was the TV’s audio output setting, because it defaulted to the internal speakers and he thought the soundbar was broken for a day or two. Once he set it to the soundbar output, it stayed put. The other thing worth knowing is that these little retro sticks usually don’t send audio through anything except the HDMI cable, so as long as your soundbar is connected to the TV and the TV is set to pass audio along, you’re fine. No cable swapping. I’d just poke around the TV’s sound menu before you assume it’s not working, since that was his whole issue. What soundbar model do you have?

[Tina M]

My soundbar is just an older Samsung one, nothing fancy, and it’s already hooked to the TV through the other HDMI port. That part I’m not touching. What I’m trying to figure out is whether the BitBip 89 going into the free port would mess with how the audio reaches the soundbar, or if the TV just keeps routing it the way it does now. I haven’t ordered the thing yet, so I can’t say from experience. My TV is a few years old and the sound menu isn’t the easiest to navigate, which is part of why I wanted to check before buying. I get that the TV is supposed to pass the audio along, but I’m still not fully sure mine will do that with a game stick plugged in. That’s really the bit I’m stuck on.

[Priya Shah]

Since the soundbar is already working off that other port, the stick shouldn’t change anything on its end. The TV just keeps sending audio out the way it does now, the stick is only feeding video and sound into the TV. The one thing I’d do before ordering is plug something into that free port and see if the TV still plays through the soundbar. If it does now, the BitBip won’t behave any differently.

[Rina Solis]

I had almost the exact same worry when I set up a little retro stick on our bedroom TV last year. Two HDMI ports, one taken by the soundbar, and I was convinced I’d be crawling behind the TV swapping cables every time I wanted to play. Turned out that wasn’t the case for me. I plugged the stick into the free port and the audio still came through the soundbar without me touching anything. I think the TV just keeps routing sound to whatever it was using before, so the new input didn’t mess with it.

That said, it took me a couple of evenings to actually trust it. The first night I kept checking the soundbar was on the right input, half expecting silence, and it was fine every time. I’ve since used it maybe a dozen times over a few months with no cable juggling. My setup isn’t fancy, just an older TV and a basic soundbar, so I can’t promise every TV behaves the same way. Some sets might need you to poke around in the audio settings once. But from my own experience, plugging into the second port didn’t break the soundbar setup at all.

So I’d say go ahead and order it, just be ready to spend five minutes in the TV menu if the sound doesn’t cooperate right away.

[SarahM]

Our setup ended up doing the opposite of what a lot of people here are describing. We had the soundbar on one port and added a little game stick to the second one, and the audio kept coming from the TV speakers instead. Nothing was broken, the picture was fine, it just would not send the sound out to the bar while the stick was the active input. My husband fiddled with the TV menu for a bit and got it working through the soundbar settings, but it was not automatic like I expected. So I would say check your TV’s audio output menu before you order, because ours did not just pass it along on its own. Once it was set, it stayed put and the kids have been using it fine for a couple of months. For what it’s worth the stick itself has been simple enough, plug it in and the controllers paired right away. I was the one expecting a headache and it was mostly the TV that caused it, not the console.

[Tom Ray]

My TV handles this differently. When I plugged a game stick into the second port, audio kept coming from the soundbar on the first port just fine, no switching or unplugging needed. It just worked the same way the TV always did.

[Riley1]

I plugged a similar little HDMI stick into my bedroom TV a few months back and had the same two port panic. What I noticed is that the stick doesn’t really care what the TV does with audio, it just sends the picture and sound to the TV like any other device. The TV then decides where that audio goes, and since your soundbar is already set up on the other port, it should keep doing its thing. Mine just worked without me touching any settings, which was a relief because I’m not big on menus. The one thing I did have to do was make sure the stick was actually selected as the input, otherwise the soundbar was happily playing silence from the TV channel. That part took me a minute to figure out, which is a bit embarrassing. So short version, you shouldn’t need to swap cables around every time. Just pick the right input and let the TV handle the rest.

[Mark Tanner]

Mine actually behaved differently from what the thread seems to be leaning toward. When I added a game stick to the second HDMI on our living room TV, the soundbar on the first port kept working for regular TV stuff, but the stick’s audio came out of the TV speakers instead of the bar. So it wasn’t switch-cable levels of annoying, but I did have to poke around in the TV’s audio settings to get it routed properly. Once I set that, it stuck and I haven’t touched it since. I’ve had the BitBip for maybe a month now and it’s been fine. The menu on mine isn’t the prettiest but the games run okay. Which TV brand are you working with?

[Tina M]

That’s useful to hear since I haven’t bought mine yet. My TV is a Samsung too, a few years old, so I’m mostly trying to figure out if the audio routing will behave the same way for me. The part about poking around in the sound settings is what I was worried about, since that menu on mine is a pain to get through. I can’t say yet whether mine will do the same thing until I actually plug one in.

[Mark Tanner]

Samsung menus are their own little adventure, so I get the dread there. One thing I’d say though: on mine the setting I needed wasn’t buried in the main sound menu at all, it was under the external device or HDMI settings, so I spent a good ten minutes poking around the wrong screen first. That’s the part that got me. If yours is a few years old the layout will differ a bit from mine anyway, so just be ready to click through a couple of submenus before you find the one that routes the stick’s audio. The good news is it’s a one-time thing. I set mine up a month ago and haven’t gone back in since, and the bar still handles everything else like before. Plug it in, see what happens, and if the sound comes out of the TV speakers you’ll know exactly where to look.

[Dana Lee]

My living room TV is a bit older and only has two HDMI ports too, and I ran into something similar when I hooked up a little streaming stick alongside my soundbar. In my case the TV didn’t automatically pass the audio over, I had to go into the TV’s audio settings and pick the soundbar as the output instead of the stick. Once I did that it stayed put and I didn’t have to mess with cables again. So it can work without switching back and forth, but it might depend on whether your TV lets you choose the audio source separately from the video source. Worth a quick look in your TV’s sound menu before you order, just to see what options are listed there.

[Khan]

Might depend on how the TV routes audio, but on mine the soundbar only picks up sound from the port it’s plugged into. So the game stick on the other port would give picture with no audio unless I switched the TV’s audio output setting each time. What TV model are you working with?

[Tina M]

It’s a Samsung from around 2019, one of the cheaper 4-series models. That’s exactly the part I’m unsure about too, whether mine will keep sending audio to the soundbar or make me go into the settings every time I switch ports.

[Khan]

The 4-series is where it gets iffy. On those cheaper Samsungs the audio setting often resets per input, so swapping to the stick’s port can leave you with picture and silence until you dig into the menu again. I’d plug it into the other port once and test switching back and forth a couple times before deciding, since that’s the exact thing that’ll annoy you daily.

[Chris O’Dell]

My preference is just to keep the soundbar on its own port and not mess with swapping anything. On my setup the TV remembers the audio route per input, so the console ends up on the other port with sound going to the bar anyway. Took me one evening of menu digging to get it set that way, mostly because the labels are vague, but since then I haven’t touched a cable. The catch is it only held after I set the audio output once per input, and I had to redo it after a firmware update. So it works, just not as set-and-forget as the box makes it sound.

[Tom_Craig]

Ours still sends sound out the soundbar fine from the stick’s port.

[L_Parker]

Mine is plugged into the second port on a fairly basic LG and the soundbar still handles audio fine, so I don’t think you’ll be swapping cables. It picked up the stick straight away and the controllers paired without any fuss. Picture was a bit soft on the older games but that’s just how they look. Which soundbar are you running?

[Tina M]

Mine’s just an old Samsung soundbar, nothing special, and it’s staying on its current port either way. I haven’t ordered the BitBip yet so I can’t say how my TV will handle it, that’s the whole reason I asked first. Your LG working fine doesn’t really tell me much about my 4-series.

[L_Parker]

Fair enough, an LG isn’t a Samsung so it’s not a straight comparison. Since yours is a 4-series and you’re not ordering yet, check the TV’s sound settings menu for an option to lock audio output to the soundbar, or look up that model’s manual on audio passthrough before you buy. If neither is clear, order from somewhere with easy returns.

[Dani Moon]

I’ve got a cheap TCL in the spare room with only two ports and a soundbar hogging one. Stuck a Fire Stick in the other and the audio still ran through the bar without me touching anything. The TV just kept passing sound along like normal. The BitBip is basically the same kind of thing, an HDMI stick that sends picture and sound to the TV, so the TV should route audio to the bar the same way. Mine did it from day one and I never had to go into menus. Only thing I’d say is check what input the TV defaults to when it powers on, because mine sometimes boots to the stick instead of the bar’s input and I have to grab the remote. Annoying but not a cable swapping situation.

[Marcus Olsen]

The only thing I’d check is whether your TV lets you pick the audio out separately from the input. Mine has a setting buried in the sound menu for that, and once it’s set the stick doesn’t touch the soundbar at all.

[Harper J]

Mine actually didn’t pass audio over on the first try. I had to go into the TV menu and switch the digital sound output to the right setting, then it worked from the second port fine. Not a cable swap situation once that’s done.

[Sam Reads]

Might depend on what your TV does with the second port. On mine the soundbar stayed on its own port and the stick went in the other one and audio still went through the bar, no swapping. Worth checking the audio output setting once before you assume it won’t work.

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