Audio Pops

[Kivo]

I'm getting pops and clicks on the audio on my home theater system. I've only noticed it on channel 6 through Time Warner cable / Tivo / Denon Receiver / HDMI. Anyone else have these problems on channel 6 or is there a problem with my system?

[bspvette86]

I noticed a handfull of stutters during "The Game" today.

[Kivo]

OK. I'm not referring to stutters. This is only in the audio. It's a scratchy pop in the audio that lasts only for a split second. It happens on almost every show I watch on channel 6 and occurs about 3 or 4 times per hour. Every time I've heard it, it's been on channel 6. Anyone else?

[Thombil]

I get constant audio dropouts on my system but not on ABC 6. Mine show up on the HD Fox channels, AMCHD, NatgeoHD, VersusHD and probably some others HD channels I don't watch much. They occur every 8 to 15 seconds when going through my Onkyo receiver connected with a digital audio coaxial cable. They are not noticeable when I use my TV speakers connect with analog RCA cables. I always figured it had something to do with the way my Onkyo receiver was processing the digital signal being sent from TWC. When I first set up my system about 5 years ago it was really bad on NBC 4 but as NBC upgraded their equipment the problem disappeared. I'm starting to think the problem is either with the audio signal being sent from the individual channel or with the way TWC passes them along. I'd like to like to have the problem corrected but feel I would just get a great big "DUH":dunno: if I tried to talk to TWC. I have tinkered with the audio settings on my SA8300HD but I"m not really sure what they change. Narrow vs Wide is all Greek to me. I do have it set to digital.

[rossl]

I was browsing through the Panasonic Viera threads at AVS forum and noticed a lot of complaints about the Viera plasmas that were hooked up through HDMI to Onkyos. They were having lots of audio dropouts just like you are describing.

It appears that Panasonic was able to resolve the problems with a firmware update that allowed looser timing on the audio stream. The culprit is jitter. Bad timing of the bits in the audio stream. Some cable boxes and DVRs are also notorious for this. Basically what happens is that the timing of the audio bitstream gets off every so often and the TV loses lock and has to re-synchronize.

Since the audio is sent in packets over the mpeg stream, and decent piece of equipment should buffer those and re-time the output of samples properly. I think what you are hearing is an occasional buffer overflow or underflow.

I would presume that the "wide" setting would be better for jitter than the "narrow" but I am just speculating.

You might want to do some searches over at AVS forum to see if there is a solution or a firmware upgrade available for your receivers.

[Thombil]

My guess is that it is in fact my Onkyo. I have a pretty old model. I think it is a DX595. Not sure about the DX. I will hopefully be upgrading in the near future so I will check out AVS before I buy.

[jpdublin]

I get the same thing on ABC-6 only and it is through my HDMI hook-up, I do not notice it on my other surround sound which is run Fiber Optic. Must be something in the signal. Sorry to see some others having the same issue, but it makes me realize that I'm not crazy (though that is up for debate).

[Thombil]

I was playing around with the wide normal narrow audio settings on my SA8300hd and found that the narrow setting reduced the audio dropouts some what. The wide setting was significantly worse. Narrow didn't stop the dropouts but it was better. Still, I don't really want to listen to audio dropouts.:confused:

[Rick]

Sorry for not being logged onto the forum for a while, have been swamped with lots of different projects... I know this is a little late but if I recall properly the audio pops was tracked down to one of the network satellite receivers. Since then I know that the network pushed a software update to fix an HD closed captioning issue and I think also addressed the AES lock loss which was causing the audio pops you were hearing since then, I'd have to go back and look at the updates release notes to know for 100%.