TV/Netflix/Sonos audio sync issues

[8bit]

We recently upgraded our telly (Phillips 55" OLED Android TV), we use this with our original Sonos Playbar (on it's own, no sub/other speakers in that room). We've noticed that sometimes when watching Netflix we find the audio is slightly delayed compared to the picture. First world problems etc. but it is quite off-putting and the previous Sony TV didn't do this.

Haven't been able to find anything much in the TV settings that might help. The Sonos app on my phone lets me add more delay to the audio, which I guess will only make things worse. I note that we get Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision logos appearing on-screen when playing some series' or films but haven't noticed a correlation and I can't see a way to disable either of these features to test it.

Anyone able to help at all?

[Lucid_AV]

This is a common issue. Some say the reason is that TV picture processing when lots of it is enabled is then causing a noticeable lip sync delay.

Here's the take on this by Sonos support: https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/article/tv-audio-a...

[somouk]

You can go in to your OLED settings and alter the audio delay to sync it back up. You can also alter a setting on the SONOS to introduce and audio delay. Just a case of playing with those to figure it out.

I get it every now and again with certain sources but not others so moving between the settings all the time would be annoying.

[8bit]

Lucid_AV said:

This is a common issue. Some say the reason is that TV picture processing when lots of it is enabled is then causing a noticeable lip sync delay.

Here's the take on this by Sonos support: https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/article/tv-audio-a...

Thanks - I'll take a look again later on.

somouk said:

You can go in to your OLED settings and alter the audio delay to sync it back up. You can also alter a setting on the SONOS to introduce and audio delay. Just a case of playing with those to figure it out.

I get it every now and again with certain sources but not others so moving between the settings all the time would be annoying.

Thanks also, but the issue is that the audio comes late, not early - adding more delay isn't going to help.

[OutInTheShed]

What happens if you use something other than the Sonos?

[8bit]

OutInTheShed said:

What happens if you use something other than the Sonos?

Don't have another sound system to test, I guess I could have tried the internal speakers on the TV if it had occurred to me

I dug a bit deeper into the menus (there seem to be two or three different sets of menus for some reason) and found something about audio format with three options. The third one was "stereo", first two looked similar to each other but the second one had (bypass) appended - selecting that seems to have done the trick, at least the episode of Squid Game we watched last night was fine, whereas the previous episode was delayed.

Thanks for all the help

[Lucid_AV]

8bit said:

Don't have another sound system to test, I guess I could have tried the internal speakers on the TV if it had occurred to me

I dug a bit deeper into the menus (there seem to be two or three different sets of menus for some reason) and found something about audio format with three options. The third one was "stereo", first two looked similar to each other but the second one had (bypass) appended - selecting that seems to have done the trick, at least the episode of Squid Game we watched last night was fine, whereas the previous episode was delayed.

Thanks for all the help

PCM does get around it, but you lose the 5 channel discrete audio that is Dolby Digital.

PCM will be stereo, and maybe carry the matrixed Pro-Logic mix in some source signals. That might not matter so much since you have just the Playbar on its own (no surrounds), but some report that the sound mix in PCM is too loud for music and effects. Voice gets a bit lost sometimes. DD5.1 has separate (discrete) channels for centre, left, right, the L&R surrounds and the sub. You have a bit more control over the sound even if you're not using the surround and sub channels.

[8bit]

Lucid_AV said:

8bit said:

Don't have another sound system to test, I guess I could have tried the internal speakers on the TV if it had occurred to me

I dug a bit deeper into the menus (there seem to be two or three different sets of menus for some reason) and found something about audio format with three options. The third one was "stereo", first two looked similar to each other but the second one had (bypass) appended - selecting that seems to have done the trick, at least the episode of Squid Game we watched last night was fine, whereas the previous episode was delayed.

Thanks for all the help

PCM does get around it, but you lose the 5 channel discrete audio that is Dolby Digital.

PCM will be stereo, and maybe carry the matrixed Pro-Logic mix in some source signals. That might not matter so much since you have just the Playbar on its own (no surrounds), but some report that the sound mix in PCM is too loud for music and effects. Voice gets a bit lost sometimes. DD5.1 has separate (discrete) channels for centre, left, right, the L&R surrounds and the sub. You have a bit more control over the sound even if you're not using the surround and sub channels.

Just checked, the three options I have for audio format are "Multichannel", "Multichannel (bypass)" and "Stereo". I have it in Multichannel (bypass) just now. It's not clear from the brief on-screen description what, exactly, is bypassed and how that differs from the other modes. I'm pretty much clueless with home cinema stuff really so I'm not sure which of these is "best" but the setting I'm on doesn't sound any worse than before but the sound does seem to be synced correctly with video. I tried a couple of audio sync test tracks on Youtube, seems fine now - but then I didn't think to look for those before I switched that setting. If I get time to play around with it tomorrow I'll switch it back and try those.

The TV does apparently support Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, not famiiar with either of those but it did occur to me that maybe there was some compatibility issue with the Playbar?

[manracer]

I've had the same issue for nearly 2 years with a combination of Samsung TV, sky Q and Sonos beam.

Tried everything to sort but as others have said, PCM for that source was the only thing that works

TV apps and a Chromecast with Google tv are fine.

Really annoying as I upgraded my TV as the 2017 Samsung TV couldnt pass through 5.1 via HDMI, new TV does but upgrading to sky Q just released another issue.

Sky Q is being cancelled in January!!

[Freakuk]

How are you connecting your playbar, via wifi or an optical cable? I've got a Samsung TV and original playbar connected via an optical cable, Netflix is a smart TV app not via a 3rd party box - Sky/Apple TV etc and never had any issues.

I also have sub and 2 play 1's, the playbar is also hardwired to my network, the other speakers are wifi - I read somewhere that having a speaker hardwired helps, if you've only got a playbar the above is irrelevant.

[Lucid_AV]

Everyone, please, just stop.

Let's get some clarity here. 8bit has a Sonos Playbar. The audio connection is via optical. Talk about DTS-HD and Dolby True HD only applies to systems where both the TV and the sound bar have HDMI eARC connections. They're not supported via optical. Throwing them into the mix is just muddying the waters for 8bit.

Also, "connecting TV audio by Wi-Fi"..... WTF?! No, just no. You connect via Wi-Fi for audio streaming (Spotify etc). TV audio is connected via a cable. It's either optical or it's HDMI. It's as simple as that.

Optical supports three digital audio formats. There's uncompressed stereo audio (PCM stereo), there's compressed multichannel in Dolby Digital format (DD5.1), and there's compressed multichannel in DTS format (DTS 5.1). These last two are bitstream, and that means the signal is delivered in a form that the Playbar needs to decode internally. This is different from PCM stereo which requires no decoding, just converting from digital to analogue.

Playbar via optical supports PCM stereo and DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 in bitstream formats. That's it.

[8bit]

Thanks all for the help - it is much appreciated, this is why I love PH forums Think I'm sorted for now with the Playbar, will keep an eye on it as the issue only seemed to happen intermittently, possibly due to different Netflix content being streamed in different audio formats.

Looking forward a bit, I did some Googling on Dolby Atmos last night. Sounds like the newer Sonos Beam gen 2 and Ray soundbars support this in some way, also other options do as well. I take it from Lucid's last post then that to get the benefit of Atmos I will need to switch to an HDMI cable connected to whichever socket(s) on the TV that support eARC? Is Atmos (and I guess the other formats like DTS-HD and True HD etc.) worth having? Again for context, most of what we watch is TV series and the odd film on Netflix, occasionally Prime Video too and we're considering Disney+ as well.

[Lucid_AV]

8bit said:

Just checked, the three options I have for audio format are "Multichannel", "Multichannel (bypass)" and "Stereo". I have it in Multichannel (bypass) just now. It's not clear from the brief on-screen description what, exactly, is bypassed and how that differs from the other modes.

These are your TV audio out settings. Stereo is PCM digital stereo. This is 2ch stereo which can also include the matrixed (hidden) Dolby Surround encoding as decoded using Dolby ProLogic / Dolby ProLogic II. This is surround sound (centre, left, right, mono or stereo rear surround depending on decoding) but it's not as precise as DD or DTS.

Multichannel mode gives you stereo PCM (with or without Dolby Surround enhancement), and bitstream DD 5.1 and bitstream DTS 5.1. What you get depends on the source signal. If you're streaming Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ etc and you're watching Freeview HD channels then you're very likely to get DD 5.1 . (DTS 5.1 isn't offered by these sources.) When watching standard definition TV channels then you're going to get PCM Stereo with/without Dolby Surround. If you listen to te radio stations via Freeview then you'll get plain stereo PCM.

Multichannel uncompressed is the one that is used to unlock the more advanced features of HDMI ARC/eARC. This how you might tap into Dolby Atmos audio (sound not only from the sides/rear but also from above). Atmos is supported if you have the higher-level Netflix subscription, or stream Prime, Disney+ etc. You'll also get it with selected content if you have Sky Q or Virgin.

The important thing for you - with your optical connection to the Playbar - is that Multichannel uncompressed will switch off the optical audio out on the TV when the source signal includes Atmos audio. That means no sound. This is because of digital content protection. The signal that carries Atmos audio for streaming is called Dolby Plus (DD+). It's an enhancement of DD 5.1. Optical is perfectly capable of carrying it but the powers that be who decide the standards chose to exclude optical audio as a way of getting Atmos audio from A to B.

What this means for you is that your TV audio out mode should be set to Multichannel or to Stereo. If you leave it on Multichannel uncompressed then at some point when you encounter a signal which includes Atmos audio then you'll lose all sound from the TV until you switch to something that's just plain stereo or regular DD 5.1.

Dolby Vision is a picture enhancement feature and nothing to do with audio.

8bit said:

Just checked, the three options I have for audio format are "Multichannel", "Multichannel (bypass)" and "Stereo". I have it in Multichannel (bypass) just now. It's not clear from the brief on-screen description what, exactly, is bypassed and how that differs from the other modes. I'm pretty much clueless with home cinema stuff really so I'm not sure which of these is "best" but the setting I'm on doesn't sound any worse than before but the sound does seem to be synced correctly with video. I tried a couple of audio sync test tracks on Youtube, seems fine now - but then I didn't think to look for those before I switched that setting. If I get time to play around with it tomorrow I'll switch it back and try those.

The TV does apparently support Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, not famiiar with either of those but it did occur to me that maybe there was some compatibility issue with the Playbar?

[Lucid_AV]

8bit said:

I take it from Lucid's last post then that to get the benefit of Atmos I will need to switch to an HDMI cable connected to whichever socket(s) on the TV that support eARC? Is Atmos (and I guess the other formats like DTS-HD and True HD etc.) worth having? Again for context, most of what we watch is TV series and the odd film on Netflix, occasionally Prime Video too and we're considering Disney+ as well.

It means more than that. It means swapping out the Playbar for some new sound bar with Atmos audio and at least a HDMI ARC audio connection.

HDMI ARC supports PCM Stereo, Bitstream (compressed) DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 and Dolby Plus (DD+ Atmos audio)

HDMI eARC does all that standard ARC does but adds support for uncompressed bitstream audio (Dolby True HD, DTS-HD Master Audio) and also multichannel PCM 5.1 / 7.1 / 9.1 / 11.1 etc plus versions with multiple subwoofers up to a total of 32 channels.

There is no audio adapter / cable / convertor box that will get any of the more advanced ARC/eARC audio features into an Optical audio connection. Your Playbar wouldn't understand what to do with an Atmos signal even if it saw it. It doesn't have the Atmos decoder. Similarly, there are no decoders inside Playbar to deal with Dolby True HD and DTS-HD MA, but that's moot since the signal requires a much fatter pipeline than optical can provide.


All of this, all of it, the whole lot depends entirely on what audio the source signal carries. You could have the most up-to-date whizzy-bang money-no-object sound system capable of handling anything you might throw at it, but if all you watch is Netflix then the absolute best audio you can hope for is the compressed DD5.1 with Atmos enhancement which is Dolby Plus.

HDMI eARC makes sense currently if you have a Blu-ray player or a UHD 4K Blu-ray player or a console capable of playing these discs. The discs for these are the only source of Dolby True HD and DTS-HD MA. Everything else maxes out at Dolby Plus (DD+), and a lot of TV doesn't go further than DD 5.1

[8bit]

Many thanks - much appreciated.

Regards your first post, the TV doesn't have "Multichannel uncompressed", it has Multichannel and Multichannel (bypass). It doesn't say whether either, neither or both of these are compressed or not - not sure if that changes things at all?

As to your second post - yes, I am aware I'd need to change the soundbar/receiver (the Playbar doesn't have an HDMI in anyway), hence I mentioned the Beam gen2 and Ray options. The TV does have a single eARC-enabled HDMI socket so in the interests of future-proofing I'd want a soundbar that supported the same. If I take the plunge then I'll be sure to get an appropriate HDMI cable, thanks again.

[Lucid_AV]

8bit said:

Many thanks - much appreciated.

Regards your first post, the TV doesn't have "Multichannel uncompressed", it has Multichannel and Multichannel (bypass).

Try plain multichannel, and not the bypass version

8bit said:

Many thanks - much appreciated.

As to your second post - yes, I am aware I'd need to change the soundbar/receiver (the Playbar doesn't have an HDMI in anyway), hence I mentioned the Beam gen2 and Ray options. The TV does have a single eARC-enabled HDMI socket so in the interests of future-proofing I'd want a soundbar that supported the same. If I take the plunge then I'll be sure to get an appropriate HDMI cable, thanks again.

Yes, I saw that you were considering a sound bar change. But then it appeared like you might want to do something with the current playbar. That's just my read of the relevant post.

Incidentally, the HDMI cable doesn't really affect things so much. It would have to be quite an old cable not to have the pin wired up that carries ARC/eARC signals. It's likely then that any current HDMI cables you own would work for ARC/eARC just fine. But if it didn't then the cost to change would be £5-£10.

[Actual]

Last year in the forlorn hope that gear from the same manufacturer would be compatible I purchased the then top Samsung TV and the top Samsung Dolby Atmos soundbar but I still experienced lip sync issues due to delayed audio and no obvious way to delay the video.

My reasons for purchasing this Samsung TV was that it uses their One Connect box with 4 HDMI ports including eARC and a tiny thin cable which connects between the One Connect and the TV panel so that most of the cables and connections can be hidden away in the console cupboard.

When I connected the Sky Q, Xbox Series X and the Soundbar to the One Connect I was plagued with lip sync problems. I can only think that by the time the TV could process the video and send the audio down the eARC to the soundbar the audio was delayed and there is no way to delay the video.

The solution that worked was to connect the Sky Q and Xbox Series X directly to the 2 HDMI IN ports on the soundbar and use the eARC OUT connection from the soundbar to the One Connect. Now I think that the soundbar can separate the audio earlier and keep in sync with the video. This arrangement works but leaves less available HDMI ports and results in more cables being visible.

The instructions only seem to show all the possible options and no explanation for which ones to use.

Very frustrating.

[8bit]

Lucid_AV said:

8bit said:

Many thanks - much appreciated.

Regards your first post, the TV doesn't have "Multichannel uncompressed", it has Multichannel and Multichannel (bypass).

Try plain multichannel, and not the bypass version

The TV was originally set to just "Multichannel", that's how it was when the audio was out of sync (behind the picture, maybe 1/4 of a second). Switching to Multichannel (bypass) seems to have corrected this.

Lucid_AV said:

8bit said:

Many thanks - much appreciated.

As to your second post - yes, I am aware I'd need to change the soundbar/receiver (the Playbar doesn't have an HDMI in anyway), hence I mentioned the Beam gen2 and Ray options. The TV does have a single eARC-enabled HDMI socket so in the interests of future-proofing I'd want a soundbar that supported the same. If I take the plunge then I'll be sure to get an appropriate HDMI cable, thanks again.

Yes, I saw that you were considering a sound bar change. But then it appeared like you might want to do something with the current playbar. That's just my read of the relevant post.

Incidentally, the HDMI cable doesn't really affect things so much. It would have to be quite an old cable not to have the pin wired up that carries ARC/eARC signals. It's likely then that any current HDMI cables you own would work for ARC/eARC just fine. But if it didn't then the cost to change would be £5-£10.

Apologies, clumsy posting on my part - no, I am aware (thanks to you and others in this thread) that original Playbar won't support Atmos or the other, advanced audio formats. Regards the cable I gather it should ideally be HDMI with ethernet to properly support eARC?

Edited by 8bit on Wednesday 23 November 23:20

[James6112]

I have a newish Samsung TV with eARC

Tempted by Sonos sound bar, eg the Arc has £200 off at JL..
I have some Play 1s

But all I read about are voice sync issues
Are they really that bad!

I just want something that works 100% out of the box

Suppose I could try it & return if not happy to JL

[Griffith4ever]

You could buy an avr amp, some speakers, have real surround, properly seperately front and centres, and no lip sync issues .

Modern av amps dialed out (have the settings to) lip sync issues a long while back. You watch a film/program, set the delay until it's bang on, then never touch it again.

Lips sync used to drive me mad until the amp manufacturers got a hold on it. Even mildly out make it very distracting for me. (As does any image processing that introduces the soap opera effect)