Something that’s caused me a lot of frustration over the last few months is the new sound system.
Don’t get me wrong – the sound quality out of it is awesome. It’s been a massive upgrade over what I had before. There’s just one small issue – when watching dvd’s, there will at random intervals be a break in sound for about a second or so.
So – what do I know ?
Music plays back 100% fine. This comes in through an optical fibre link via network streaming. I’ll have this going for many hours at a run, which proves there’s nothing wrong with the main circuits of the amplifier. I.e. it’s not an overheating thing.
Blu ray discs (I believe) play back just fine. And they look and sound awesome. Lossless DTS Master Audio is as good as it’s going to get. The sound field makes 2d feel like 3d.
I say believe there because I can’t remember (not) hearing the audio silence blip. Much more research required there I think.
Where’s it going wrong ? I firmly believe now it’s a dvd only problem. It’s been happening over multiple discs, like several Babylon 5 dvds, Titan AE, Attack of the Clones. The list goes on and I don’t believe there’s a link as the quality of the material is both at the high end and the low end.
High end – Attack of the Clones is as high quality a dvd (in terms of production) as it’s going to get.
Low end – Babylon 5 was a decent series but the quality of transfer to dvd is very, very patchy (more below)
What have I tried lately ?
New firmware in the blu-ray drive. Firmware is the instructions that’s buried in most electronics. It’s the electronics that Make Things Go. I’d been holding off on this because I didn’t want the new firmware to cause more trouble but I’ve finally bitten the bullet.
Reset to factory settings. It’s always worth a shot.
A Plan B. This means using a different cable to take the sound. Tried it – the quality difference is noticeable though. Sound through HDMI is crystal clear, whereas sound through the old style link seems muffled somehow.
Disabling all the Clever Stuff. This is the fanciness that turns on the TV or amp with the blu-ray player. However, one possible cause is “HDMI handshake” problems, where the blu-ray player and amp have an argument over what they can both do. Result – a second or so of confusion.
Next in mind is to use my Xbox360 as a dvd player. That will send the picture & sound via HDMI, the path that doesn’t work so well with the blu-ray player. This will prove once and for all whether the problem is in the amp or the player. I reckon it’s the player having issues with dvd, seeing as I believe blu-ray discs are ok.
I’m currently testing things out by watching a few Babylon 5 episodes, which brings me back to that More Later.
The script and story quality is very good with Babylon 5. The CGI was years ahead of its time and still comes over pretty well on a High Def screen. It’s very crude by the standards of today’s telly and definitely today’s games but still looks good. What’s surprising is the quality of the live action camera scenes. Most of the scenes are sharp but there’s a few where the high def shows up a huge amount of noise in the transfer. Things like the noise turning up as background snow in the image and sound that’s “not quite right”. It’s definitely Babylon 5 because I don’t see it in anything else.
Ahhh – more research required. Which means more watching of Babylon 5 episodes, hoping that the new firmware has cleaned up the sound. If not, the next steps are :
Watching a few episodes with the lesser quality audio
Watching episodes via the Xbox
Researching which 3d capable blu-ray player to buy
I hear growling noises … Time for munchies !
PS I could comment on “blip count so far” but my superstitious side is telling me that as soon as I do, the blips will start up again.