# Help me... I've had enough... audio synch problems!



## ls7dude (Jan 31, 2007)

Hi All,

I'm ready to pull my hair out with this audio synch problem. Almost all of my HD locals are out of synch at one point or another. I've had this new plasma for about 1 1/2 months now and every darn night I have to watch Jay Leno and Conan looking like I'm watching an old Japanese movie.

I'm starting to get to the point where I'm really angry that I'm even paying for this HD crap. 

It has been the locals up until Sunday. On Sunday, I noticed the Sopranos and Entourage where off very slightly. 

The last time I checked I still had L366 version. 

My receiver is also setup for HD audio in the menu.

Help me, what can I do? I'm about ready to run over this thing.

Thanks, Gene.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Ok Gene.. first thing you can do is don't cross post....  

Ok.. now on to helping.. Need to answer some questions first to try and narrow down your experiences.

1) Are you seeing this only on your Dish HD locals? I notice you mention Sopranos. Is this a one time event or do you also see it there? If it is mainly only on your Dish HD locals, I would email dishquality if you have not already done so. Wonder if anyone in your area also is seeing the same issues with lypsync.

2) What type of audio connection are you using? Optical or RCA. If OPtical, what happens when you try RCA. Have you tried hooking up your 622 directly to your TV using your RCA connections and seeing if the sync issue is there? 

3) I assume that you are only seeing this on certain programming or is it across the board. 

4) Might also what to elaborate on what type of set up you have and what you have tried.

Ok. that should get the ball rolling.


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## DishDude1 (Apr 13, 2002)

My 622 does this from time to time also, usually on locals. However I bought Borat Saturday night, and there was a terrible lip sync issue. I was on L366, using hdmi and just listening to the speakers through my tv.


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## ls7dude (Jan 31, 2007)

Ron,

Sorry, I didn't know whether it was an HD problem or a 622 problem.

#1.. This Sunday was the first time I noticed it with anything other than the local channels and that was with the Sopranos and Entourage, but I recorded them and watched an hour or so later. 

Also, I watched the Sopranos again on the Monday repeat, live, and it still was out of synch a little bit. I though maybe the recording was the problem, but since it did it in live tv I guess not.

#2.. I am using HDMI cable directly from 622 to TV.

#3.. I don't watch much on NBC I guess, only later at night when I notice the problem with Conan and Jay Leno. When I watch ABC for news and all it seems to be ok. 

#4.. I have a newly installed 622 as of a couple of weeks ago. I also had an extra coax cable ran so I have dual RG6 connectors at the wall plate. I purchased a brand new Philips 50PF9731D plasma. It is hooked up via HDMI. I have no stereo or anything else but a DVD player hooked up HDMI as well.

I will add that I watch a lot of FOX and I have no issues with local fox HD.

Thanks, Gene.


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## ls7dude (Jan 31, 2007)

DishDude1 said:


> My 622 does this from time to time also, usually on locals. However I bought Borat Saturday night, and there was a terrible lip sync issue. I was on L366, using hdmi and just listening to the speakers through my tv.


I assume you purchased Borat from Dish? What locals are you having an issue wtih?


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## msalvail (Sep 19, 2003)

ls7dude said:


> Hi All,
> 
> I'm ready to pull my hair out with this audio synch problem. Almost all of my HD locals are out of synch at one point or another. I've had this new plasma for about 1 1/2 months now and every darn night I have to watch Jay Leno and Conan looking like I'm watching an old Japanese movie.
> 
> I'm starting to get to the point where I'm really angry that I'm even paying for this HD crap.


The only channel that we are noticing having problems with Audio Sync is TNTHD, Channel 138. It's out of sync both live and recorded. :nono2:

The regular TNT channel syncs fine.

We are running our audio through our Sony receiver. The video is HDMI.

Any settings I can check in the Dish Menu?


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## ls7dude (Jan 31, 2007)

I just got 4.03 today, like a lot of others. I've had my new plasma for about a month and a half. The volume normally gets really loud around 20 and when watching shows like RAVE HD and the concerts I turn it up to close to 30 and it is almost too loud to listen to. I don't recall ever having the volume above 30.

Tonight, I was watching some shows and I realized that for me to hear it as loud as I wanted, regular TV I was in the high 30's, where as before I was in the low 20's. 

I thought there might be something wrong with my new TV. Further playing around I come to find out that all of my HD channels have the audio volume output lowered. 

I'm pretty disappointed in the HD volume output loss... or should I say very disappointed.

Also, I was watching Big Love on HBO HD tonight. The first 5 minutes or so didn't have any audio.

So now I have lip synch problems, HD audio volume output loss and now audio dropouts... I'm pretty angry.


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## koralis (Aug 10, 2005)

ls7dude said:


> Hi All,
> 
> I'm ready to pull my hair out with this audio synch problem. Almost all of my HD locals are out of synch at one point or another. I've had this new plasma for about 1 1/2 months now and every darn night I have to watch Jay Leno and Conan looking like I'm watching an old Japanese movie.


You need to set your reciever to delay audio processing by 80-100ms or so, so that the audio is matched (or at least close) to the video. My old reciever couldn't do it, and I was occasionally having some bad issues with HD and my TV... so I bought a new yamaha reciever that could do it and the problem basically went away.

Another possibility is to speed up your TV. For my samsung, there's a service menu that allows you to turn off signifigant chunks of visual processing routines, and that makes things a bit faster (neccessary for video games, not so important for TV and movies if you have the audio delay.)


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

TNTHD sync issues are definitely source related. Last time I checked I did not see them, but there was a lot of people reporting them earlier on...

Yeah.. I was thinking as Koralis was that you a TV adjustment might cure things. Another thing to try.. Check your dolby settings and and change them to PCM only. See if that improves things. If it does, toggle it back to DD/PCM. Perhaps it is something in the DD going through the HDMI that might be causing the delay. Another thing to try is the RCA audio to your TV and compare. 

As for the loudness. That is a tough one since volume level differs from channel to channel and you will see a big difference going for a DD to PCM channel. Hmmm.. Be real curious what your audio experiences in terms of volume is with just plan RCA audio. 

Well there is a couple things to try and see if you can improve your audio experience or possible narrow down your audio issues.


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## msalvail (Sep 19, 2003)

<<TNTHD sync issues are definitely source related. Last time I checked I did not see them, but there was a lot of people reporting them earlier on...>>

So you're saying it's on TNTs end? Has it been reported to them, I wonder?

<<Yeah.. I was thinking as Koralis was that you a TV adjustment might cure things. Another thing to try.. Check your dolby settings and and change them to PCM only. See if that improves things. If it does, toggle it back to DD/PCM.>>

What exactly are PCM and DD/PCM? Which is preferable?

Thanks!


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Not sure if it has been reported to TNTHD. I am sure it has been reported to Dish thought the post here and I would suspect that gets forwarded to TNTHD if it is on there end. I have seen people indicated they are seeing it on multiple type of receivers so to me that is a strong indication it is not a receiver issues.

If you using a AV Receiver that supports DD, DD/PCM is setting you want to use in most situations. What it does is send DD for Dolby and PCM for programs that don't have Dolby from my understanding. With a TV setup, I am not sure how much a difference this setting will make and I am sure it is TV dependent.


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

PCM = pulse-code modulation, used for stereo
DD = Dolby Digital, mostly 2.0 stereo or 5.1 full surround with sub-woofer though there are variations in-between

If you choose DD, you get no sound unless there is a DD soundtrack.
If you choose PCM, you never get the DD track. Mainly for pre-DD decoders.
DD/PCM is usually the best choice as Ron described.


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## ls7dude (Jan 31, 2007)

None of these responses really apply to me, since I don't use a receiver. I have the plasma hooked up to the 622 via HDMI.

As far as the sound, everyone is trying to diagnose the problem as if it's been like this for me from the beginning.

The sound, for me, on HD and SD was the same volume output until I received 4.03


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## koralis (Aug 10, 2005)

ls7dude said:


> None of these responses really apply to me, since I don't use a receiver. I have the plasma hooked up to the 622 via HDMI.
> 
> As far as the sound, everyone is trying to diagnose the problem as if it's been like this for me from the beginning.
> 
> The sound, for me, on HD and SD was the same volume output until I received 4.03


So you're sending the audio to the tv via HDMI cable? There is a setting that specifies whether to sync the audio to TV1 or TV2... maybe the update changed it to TV2. Look in the audio menus.


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## ottokrat (Nov 19, 2005)

TNTHD is the worst. Not only is the audio out of sync, but the image is streched like watching regular definition on a wide screen tv set to fill the screen.

But more on topic I have audio sync problems with many many channels. Very annoying. Mostly HD, but SD also. I have no OTA.


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## wje (Mar 8, 2006)

ls7dude said:


> The sound, for me, on HD and SD was the same volume output until I received 4.03


One more thing to check... in the Dolby audio setup, are you set to line mode or RF mode? It's possible the update changed the setting. Line mode will give you a wider dynamic range, RF will compress the volume range. Note that this only affects Dolby audio. So, depending upon the setting, the SD/HD volume might differ noticeably.


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## retexan599 (Aug 1, 2006)

My TNTHD on DISH 138/9420 has had audio synch problems in the past, but tonight I notice it is spot-on watching Law & Order. I am one of the many who wrote to them to complain, and perhaps they did listen to us. My main other audio problem is with my local CBS channel who recently went HD for the local (Houston) news and they are just ever so slightly off...funny, one becomes kind of a connoisseur of lip synching :lol:


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## Mr.72 (Feb 2, 2007)

I also noticed TNTHD is doing a lot better in terms of sync beginning last weekend.

Audio sync problems are abundant with HDTV and they are made worse by the response/buffer time of the display in many cases. Much of it is source-related but part of it is due to the delay in the video when using a digital display, so the video is behind the audio. It's difficult to tell which is causing the problem. In either case, source-related problems, unless they are global to Dish's programming, can hardly be Dish's fault but they should work to resolve them with the provider. If they are consistent then they might be able to correct them at the head-end. Video response sync issues are up to the user to fix but it'd be nice if Dish would put an audio delay option on the 622 to make it easier to fix these issues for most of us. I'd rather set it on the 622 instead of on an audio receiver since different sources (622, video game console, DVD player etc.) may require different settings.

seeya-


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## Amherst (Sep 21, 2006)

My 622 and my 211's have had audio sync issues mainly since January. Before January once in a while some shows would run out and usually would correct itself. Now the problem is constant and does not go away. Most HD channels have some sync issues and also some SD. Both firmware versions 3.66 and 4.03 have sync problems. All audio outputs (digital or analog) have sync issues. Output to display or receiver have sync issues.
This is an ugly problem and one of the many I've experienced since becoming a E sub. Totally have given up trying to figure out this junk equipment. This is the service I get for $125 month. 
Tired of complaining.

Tip: "E" has too many HD channels per transponder (more than any other provider) resulting in much too compressed video (easily seen on quality plasma), maybe possibly why the sync issues also.
Something has changed in January related to this issue.


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## SanDiegoPaul (Jan 17, 2007)

ottokrat said:


> TNTHD is the worst. Not only is the audio out of sync, but the image is streched like watching regular definition on a wide screen tv set to fill the screen.
> 
> But more on topic I have audio sync problems with many many channels. Very annoying. Mostly HD, but SD also. I have no OTA.


Funny you mention the image stretch. Am I the only one who doesnt' see this problem? On my 65 incher it looks fine.


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## Mr.72 (Feb 2, 2007)

it looks fine with a HD program. But SD programs on TNTHD are stretched, including commercials.


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## ls7dude (Jan 31, 2007)

wje said:


> One more thing to check... in the Dolby audio setup, are you set to line mode or RF mode? It's possible the update changed the setting. Line mode will give you a wider dynamic range, RF will compress the volume range. Note that this only affects Dolby audio. So, depending upon the setting, the SD/HD volume might differ noticeably.


Thank you for your input. I did check and it is in RF mode. This problem is really annoying.


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