I'm guessing you moved the ir around while issuing volume commands to try and find the sweet spot? Is it a pre made ir splitter or one that was made onsite?
Did you bind the tvs optical out to a receiver optical input? His sound bar had 2 inputs so we also learned the code for the input he was using and put it in for the input we used on the receiver.
I programmed one 3 days ago. We just learned vol up/down and mute. Put them in a generic receiver and bound the rooms volume control to that receiver. Then bound the ir port to the receiver.