TV audio into DAC via eARC or better

Several year back I had both DirecTV and Xfinity. One day out of curiosity, I compared the same program from both providers switching back and forth. Sound quality and picture quality was way better by DirecTV compared to Xfinity. Picture and sound were compressed by Xfinity. Now I have only DirecTV. So your problem may be solved by changing the provider. Just a thought.

@pwerahera 

Absolutely DirecTV has better standard video and audio.  Not sure how much longer they will be around with Starlink providing internet to everyone who doesn't have a cable provider.  I'm worried more compression is in our future not less.  I assume that means the chip uncompressing all the audio and video is going to be important.   

My system is setup like yours.  I run ARC from the TV into my HifiRose streaming DAC or Classe preamp and it works well but there are many times where it doesn’t get the “handshake “ and I need to switch sources and then it works.  Optical is more reliable than ARC, but in some rare instances ARC is capable of better resolution.  I would be willing to bet though that the resolution between the two is identical most of the time.  You may run into audio sync issues and again, that’s a power on/off and/or switch sources remedy to fix it.  

I have two systems, predicated on room layout.  My best system has my TV centered between my two channel audio.  So I run optical into my Tambaqui DAC with quality electronics and speakers .  It sounds amazing.

Upstairs my TV is not between my speakers.  So I use a small Marantz AV receiver into a nice unpowered sound bar with Left, Center and Right speakers.  This is connected by ARC over HDMI.  While the convenience of the usual handshake (works about 75% of the time) is nice, in no way does this sound anywhere as good as TV audio over optical into a high end system, regardless of center channel or not.

I would always choose the best equipment first, and not go with (Sonos) just to use eARC.

yeah not using SONOS just know it's very popular.  Probably going into a new DAC in the $10k-$15k range.  Maybe MSB Discrete