I have the Samsung HT-TX72 5.1 Home Theater in a Box and I'm having problems with audio cutting out for a second every now and then. I currently have the receiver connected directly to the TV via the optical audio cable. My Xbox 360 and PS3 get the audio through HDMI and feed it through the optical cable to the receiver. It's very annoying and I don't understand what could be causing this.

I have tried connecting the optical cable directly into the consoles and found out they don't cut out at all. The thing is, I don't want to keep switching the cable to one console to another in order to get 5.1 audio.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! :)

Number one mistake of connections is to go with an audio connection directly from a source to your display and then try to support the audio from that source to your sound system with the display in between. If you are out of inputs on the sound system, you need a system with more input or some sort of digtial audio switch. But your display is not going to work out for you as a digital audio switch.

Thanks for the fast response. What do you recommend me in buying in order to get all my systems connected to my receiver? Any specific digital audio switches I can find from monoprice, etc?

Can you give a run down of all source devices with audio you want to support?

Maybe even think to the future of devices you may add?

I'm planning on connecting a PS3 (HDMI), 360 (HDMI), Wii (Component), and a future satellite receiver most likely over HDMI as well.

I think I figured it out. I connected my 4 port HDMI switch to my home theater receiver as it includes a HDMI IN and OUT. At this moment I connected my PS3 through it and it works great picture and audio-wise! It also picks up DTS which is great as it didn't before through the optical cable. I will connect anything else in the future through the switch and as for the Wii, I'll just use the digital optical cable.

What do you think? Is that how it should have been to begin with? Do you think loss of signal is what was causing the audio skips in the first place, since it was going through HDMI and a digital optical cable through the TV?

As of now, there has been no audio-skips whatsoever and sounds really great.