# Dish Audio Quality



## swbca (Mar 29, 2013)

When we switched from Comcast to Dish 1 month ago, it started a major overhaul of most of our entertainment equipment. The DishTV features, like the DVR options and HDTV in 3 rooms is a huge upgrade from our Comcast setup. We had never had a good audio system connected to Comcast progamming.

For the first time I finallly got around to setting up a mid-price range surround sound system. I already had a full set of very good NHT speakers, but I had never used them except for the 2 fronts.

*The issue/question:*
The results and the problem: (my friend in the custom home-theater business always said, a good audio system makes a poor quality source sound much worse than if you are listening with a poor quality audio system - like TV speakers)

So with very good speakers and a mid-range receiver . . . .

DVD's sounds great
Most NetFlix movies (from RoKu module) sound good, but not great. 
Most programming from DishTV sounds from Fair to really bad, depending on the program. Much of it sounds like compression similar to, but not as bad as Serius radio News Programs, like cnbc, cnn etc . . which are painful to listen to.

My wife likes the CBC show "The good wife". That was the first time she heard the new audio system and she made me switch back to the TV speakers after 10 minutes. We had already switched to plain stereo mode because the music track was so poorly mixed, but then speach still sounded highly compressed . . painful to listen to.

The poor sound quality is not really a problem when using the TV speakers.
Its hard to frame a specific question to this dilemma. Any comments or suggestions from your experience with DishTV on a home theater sound system?


----------



## [email protected] Network (Jan 5, 2011)

There are a few things we can check to see about improving the sound quality. What type of cable are you using for the receiver? What receiver model is your sound system hooked up to?


----------



## swbca (Mar 29, 2013)

[email protected] Network said:


> There are a few things we can check to see about improving the sound quality. What type of cable are you using for the receiver? What receiver model is your sound system hooked up to?


The Hopper is connected with an HDMI cable. The receiver is a Denon AVR -1913. The other 2 program sources also have HDMI inputs to the receiver.


----------



## gtal98 (Jan 30, 2011)

Is the poor sound quality on just the local channels, or on all channels? If it's just the locals, it may just be poor mixing at the TV station, if it's all channels then something is not setup right, because I have no complaints with the audio in my system (full surround). Is your Hopper set to Dolby/PCM or PCM Only? (Menu, Settings, Audio, Audio Output) It should be set to Dolby and your Denon set to Dolby decoding mode with no room effects turned on. Also pay attention to what mode your Denon says it's in on the front panel (I'm assuming it has indicators similar to my Onkyo) - each channel can have a different type of audio encoding, and it may be only certain formats that you haven't tweaked the Denon for yet.

Also make sure your center channel is correctly connected and you have the appropriate speakers turned on (or off) in the Denon settings.


----------



## swbca (Mar 29, 2013)

gtal98 said:


> Is the poor sound quality on just the local channels, or on all channels? If it's just the locals, it may just be poor mixing at the TV station, if it's all channels then something is not setup right, because I have no complaints with the audio in my system (full surround). Is your Hopper set to Dolby/PCM or PCM Only? (Menu, Settings, Audio, Audio Output) It should be set to Dolby and your Denon set to Dolby decoding mode with no room effects turned on. Also pay attention to what mode your Denon says it's in on the front panel (I'm assuming it has indicators similar to my Onkyo) - each channel can have a different type of audio encoding, and it may be only certain formats that you haven't tweaked the Denon for yet.
> 
> Also make sure your center channel is correctly connected and you have the appropriate speakers turned on (or off) in the Denon settings.


I have only had it running for 2 days. I will dig into the settings on the Hopper and on the reciever. On the receiver I have only tried the very top level of options so far. The other sources were good with default surround settings without any tweaking except for the automated speaker setup. The problem with the Dish channels we have tried sounds like compression . . speach is grainy / raspy. I can deal with the crappy surround mixing with some TV shows by going into stereo mode. But to your point, there are a lot of options for me to explore.


----------



## mitchflorida (May 18, 2009)

You have to set the audio output to "Line" not RF, which is compressed.

RF mode stops DD5.1. Only stereo in RF mode. 

Line mode gives you DD5.1 over optical.


----------



## gtal98 (Jan 30, 2011)

mitchflorida said:


> You have to set the audio output to "Line" not RF, which is compressed.
> 
> RF mode stops DD5.1. Only stereo in RF mode.
> 
> Line mode gives you DD5.1 over optical.


That is not the case for me, but I'm not using optical, just HDMI. I have volume leveling turned on (which kicks in RF mode) and my Onkyo displays that is is receiving a DD5.1 signal.


----------



## dmspen (Dec 1, 2006)

Have you verified the phasing of your speakers? Reverse phasing can cause a warbling sound. Probably not the cause but I'd thought I'd mention it.


----------



## Fooeywuffle (Apr 8, 2015)

I say both Dish and XM audio quality suck. Not much better than a good Boom Box. Seems that the audio is filtered so nothing below 50 to 60 Cy on bass and highs clipped around 5 KC. No changing of anything made it any better. We pay too much for this crummy audio. 
_______________________________________________________________________________________
If brute force doesn't work, your not using enough of it, and yes, pigs can fly if you use enough power!


----------

