With two plugs jacked in, Kanex says you’ll encounter problems. But if you swap among sources, be sure to unplug it from its power cable, remove one audio and replace the other, then plug the power adapter back in. That shouldn’t be a problem for most people. (Also make sure to set the Apple TV’s audio settings to stereo if you had it on surround sound, otherwise it won’t decode properly.)Īlso note that the Kanex can only have one type of audio jack connected at once. There’s no volume control in the Kanex, and the Apple TV’s volume controls only the HDMI end point (like a TV set), so if you want to control playback level you need headphones with an inline slider or dial. The 3.5mm stereo output can be used with powered speakers or as an input to a receiver that lacks S/PDIF support, but it even works with headphones. I tested this with an iTunes-purchased movie and a fourth-generation Apple TV, dutifully listening closely to each of my five speakers and subwoofers, and heard crisply delineated separation. The S/PDIF support includes both 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound Kanex says any uncompressed, encoded format will work, like DTS Digital and Dolby Digital. In my case, I needed to feed the power cord out the back of my A/V cabinet, then slightly disassemble the receiver set-up to route the TOSlink optical digital cable into the S/PDIF. You wind up moving around a fair amount of gear to get it hooked in, but that’s a one-time issue. The drawback is that it requires power, although it includes a necessary micro-USB cable and compact AC adapter that has the same size and shape as one for an iPhone. It has both S/PDIF optical digital and 3.5mm stereo audio ports, which make it universally compatible. It supports HDMI 1.4 and ostensibly passes through every high-definition format and resolution currently available. You can plug it inline with an existing setup. The Kanex adapter is, in essence, an HDMI shunt: It has a short integral HDMI cable to plug into an Apple TV (or a Roku, Amazon Fire TV, or other devices), and an HDMI port to accept a cable that connects to a TV set.

The Kanex (at left) is compact, sleek, and well designed, but it’s got lots of jacks and plugs to manage.

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