Sony TV (KE-65XH9005) no sound from Soundbar on Bluray (ok on DVDs...)

[jonski]

I have a panasonic Bluray/DVD player and a Yamaha Soundbar attached to my Sony KE-65XH9005.  Strange problems if I play a DVD the soundbar works fine, but, if I play a Bluray the introduction plays fine through the soundbar, but as soon at the actual film starts there is no sound unless I revert back to using the TV in-built speakers.  Can anyone  help please?

[royabrown2]

@jonski 

I’m going to guess that the soundtrack on the BluRay disc you are playing is in DTX Master Audio. Read the details on the box and see if that’s the case,

This is something the TV doesn’t itself support, so when you are using the TV Speakers, the TV and the BluRay player negotiate a lesser format that the TV can actually handle.

But with the Yamaha soundbar in the loop, the TV decides to passthrough the audio and let the soundbar handle it, which it can’t, hence the silence.

I had a Samsung TV that was over-ambitious like that, and had to be told not to pass DTX.

Chances are that if you find a Bluray that is in Dolby Atmos, this will play just fine, albeit not in full Dolby Atmos.

How you solve this for DTX in the very best way depends on the Panny and the Yammy, but you haven’t told us what model numbers each of these are, so it’s hard to dig.

Given that the TV is only ARC, you would do best to pass the video to the TV and the audio to the soundbar, but this will require that the Panny is one of the models with two outputs, and the Yammy has an HDMI IN suitable for the purpose, and can handle the DTX. Always assuming that I’m right about the DTX anyway,….

So, please come back with the format of the BluRay movie, and those two model numbers, and we’ll go from there.

[jonski]

Thanks very much,  I really appreciate your taking the time to reply:

The audio on the Bluray is marked as DTS-HD MA7.1 rather than DTX. 

The sound bar is Yamaha YAS-209

The Panasonic Bluray player is a Panasonic DMP-BDT2

[rooobb]

As @royabrown2 guessed the track DTS MA is lossless and you soundbar does not support eArc (the TV should) so it won't be able to receive it...

[royabrown2]

@rooobb

Thanks for weighing in.

But here’s Sony’s spec for the TV, and eARC needed/needs a firmware update:-

https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/televisions-projectors-lcd-tvs-android-/ke-65xh9005/speci...

HDMI AUDIO RETURN CHANNEL (ARC)

Yes (ARC)

FEATURES SPECIFIED IN HDMI2.1

4K120 1/eARC 2/VRR 3/ALLM 4

2    eARC will be available via a future firmware update.

So maybe @jonski’s TV hasn’t had this update? But either way, it’s academic, as the YAS209 only has ARC.

Wikipedia, describing DTS-HD MA, says:-

“Rather than being an entirely new coding mechanism, DTS-HD MA encodes an audio master in lossy DTS first, then stores a concurrent stream of supplementary data representing whatever the DTS encoder discarded. This gives DTS-HD MA a lossy "core" able to be played back by devices that cannot decode the more complex lossless audio.”

i.e. the lossy core should be playable over ARC. And if DTS Digital Sound is DTS, then the Sony can play that, and pass it to the YAS209 over ARC, and the YAS209 can likewise play it.

So our working hypothesis becomes that the Sony ought to be able to decode DTS-HD MA to DTS Digital Sound, and pass that to the YAS209 - and it needs to decode it, as it is no good trying to pass the DTS-HD MA stream over ARC for the YAS209 to decode - and the Sony must be telling the BluRay player that it can decode it, or they would negotiate a lesser format that you could hear.

But somewhere along the line this isn’t happening 😢 Exactly where, I think you will need to ask Sony Support directly, and what they suggest as the best workaround - maybe a setting on the Sony, maybe something on the Panny.

Moving to the Panny, only the one output. Maybe try plugging the Panny into the Yammy, as it has an HDMI IN, and playing the BluRay that way - audio straight into the Yammy, and video passed by the Yammy to the TV, and you selecting the TV HDMI IN marked ARC in order to watch it? I don’t think HDCP will get in the way here (though it would on UHD).

One final thing to try with the current configuration though, changing the Digital Audio Output,

from p24 of the Panny manual:-

 
 PCM is a last-ditch choice, as it is just stereo, but see if flipping between Dolby and DTS gets your audio playing as it should. There should be an AUTO setting (and maybe there is) but try the manual ones anyway.

[jonski]

Many thanks for your help!  I changed the setting to PCM in the Panasonic,  and I now have sound coming through the Yamaha from the Blu-ray disc.  😊  I'm not sure what you mean by it  being 'only' stereo -  I only have the soundbar and its sub-woofer,  and it sounds ok for me.

I took a look in the settings of the Sony setting and it says that the software is up-to-date.  I'm not sure if 'firmware update' is separate thing but I couldn't find it in the settings.

Thanks again. Frankly,  I'm astonished by the depth of your knowledge, kudos 👍

[royabrown2]

@jonski 

Thanks for your appreciation!

I gained most of the knowledge I drew upon there getting the best out of a Panasonic BluRay player (UHD), a Samsung TV with just ARC, and a Yamaha YSP2500, likewise with just ARC.

As with your setup, there was a setting on the Samsung that when set, played fine on the Samsung’s own speakers, but gave only silence from the soundbar. So it was pretty similar territory 😛

If you haven’t got it on already, you should try the DTS Virtual:X on the Yamaha, called 3D Surround Sound in the menus. This uses psychoacoustic techniques to trick your ears into believing there are height speakers, and speakers alongside you, maybe even behind.

So you put your BluRay disc on, and the DTS-HD MA 7.1 doesn’t come through because of whatever the problem is, but the ARC on the Yamaha anyway means that the best you could get is the lossy DTS 5.1 at the core of the DTS-HD MA. So you set the Panny to PCM, which pretty much always works, but it is ‘only’ Stereo, 2.1, which the TV passes to the Yamaha. Where 3D Surround Sound works its magic to make that virtual 5.1 again, or maybe even better with the height effects.

It’s not quite the 7.1 that was on the disc, but it’s a pretty good runner-up 😛

Re the TV firmware for eARC, that will have happened on a software update you will have had, if Sony have kept their promise to implement it. But it doesn’t matter if it has or not, at the moment, as the Yammy isn’t eARC, so the Sony couldn’t use eARC even if it’s got it.

However, do try my suggestion of plugging the Panny into the Yammy, at least as an experiment, so you can hear the real original audio from the disc, as far as the Yammy can do that. You will either be blown away, and want to keep it like that, or you will wonder what all the fuss was about, and plug the Panny back into the TV, where it will be a bit easier to manage 😛

[jonski]

Thanks,  your passing on your knowledge experience is very much appreciated, I'd have been completely lost without it.   

I have tried the surround sound and find it good.

Regarding plugging the Panny into the Yammy:  I'm currently using the HDMI Out (arc) on the Panny to connect it to the tv.   Do I disconnect the Panny from the TV and plug it instead into the 'HDMI In'  port on the Yammy?  If so, how does the picture get to the TV?  Does the Soundbar pass it on via the HDMI Out? - Excuse my complete ignorance about how these things work....

[royabrown2]

Hi @jonski 

Yes, you have guessed right 😛

However, I’d be extremely surprised if the HDMI Out on the Panny was labelled ARC, as its sole purpose is to pass video and audio to a playing device. But apart from that, you are right on the money.

So, just as HDMI 1 (probably) takes the video and audio from the Panny and plays it on the TV, HDMI 3 will take any video and audio sent from the soundbar and play it on the TV. And as your soundbar has a separate HDMI In, you could plug your Panny in there, and the video will indeed go into the TV over the HDMI Out from the soundbar. (The audio won’t, as the soundbar knows to suppress this when it is playing the audio itself).

So the soundbar has two ‘modes’ of operation; if it detects a signal on its HDMI In, it can send the video to the TV over its HDMI Out and play the audio itself; or if it detects audio on the ARC ‘back channel’ from the TV to the soundbar HDMI Out, it can play that audio. This is what you might call ‘normal’ soundbar mode. On simpler soundbars with no connection other the HDMI for ARC, that’s all they can do; but yours is more versatile.

Depending on the specific soundbar, it may switch between these ‘modes’ automatically, or you may have to switch, or a mixture of both.

Try it, and see how you get on.

[jonski]

Actually, the HDMI Out is labelled 'arc' on the soundbar.  And I have always previously had the cable going from that port to the HDMI arc port on the Sony TV, so the sound has been transmitted into  the soundbar through the  'out' port... So it is puzzling that it works at all, given what you said.   

In any case, now I've:

- Changed the 'digital audio out' setting on the Panny from PCM back to 'Bitstream' as it was originally.

- plugged the HDMI cable from the Panny into the 'HDMI In' port on the Yammy.

- taken a second cable from the 'HDMI Out Arc' port on the Yammy to one of the HDMI ports on the Sony. (Initially I used the HDMI port labelled 'arc' on the Sony, but this port did not show up for selection on the list of channels, so I used one of the other HDMI ports.

The Sound from the Bluray is coming through fine to the Soundbar and sounds impressive - Does this configuration mean that I'm now getting the 'DTS HD Master Audio' as intended, or should  I be using the arc port on the Sony (I guess not because the sound is no longer being transmitted via the TV?)