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Audio dropouts Beam+LGOLED55CPUA

  • 11 June 2021
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I have a home theater setup with LG TV+Beam+subwoofer + 2SLs speakers,Beam connected to TV via eARC HDMI, using Sonos S2 system.Connected to the TV via HDMI are a Dish Hopper 3 receiver, a Samsung Blue-ray and an Amazon Fire TV box.

 TV has latest software and firmware. The Sonos system was purchased in March 2020 and so is out of warranty.

All worked well until 2 days ago when I suddenly lost all sound on the system. Spent 90 minutes on the phone with Sonos tech and completely reset up the whole system. After I hung up with tech, I realized I was getting audio dropouts which became more frequent the longer the system was on. I disconnected the HDMI from the ARC port and used the TV sound instead.

Yesterday I rebooted the entire system by disconnecting the power and reconnecting after 1 minute but it did not help.

Today I switched out the ARC HDMI cable but still was getting dropouts, more frequent the longer the whole system was on, such that after 1 hour the audio was unintelligible .

I called Sonos tech again, and they ran several diagnostics, had me unplug all the HDMI cables, then replug and repeated the diagnostics. He was able to demonstrate that I could play Amazon music directly thought the Sonos without any dropouts.

 The tech said  that the diagnostics show that the system is working fine, even though I insisted it is not, given the persistent audio dropouts.

I was told my only recourse is to call tech again (3d time) after which they would arrange a replacement beam at a “reduced cost”.

Is there anything else I can do ,especially involving the LG TV settings, that might avoid having to send the Beam back to Sonos?

It just seems suspicious that everything worked fine and this problem suddenly appeared, but looking though the recent posts on the Home Theater forum, it seems people have had this problem for at least  the last month with different models of TVs, especially LG and Samsung.

Thanks for any assistance.

Caroline

 

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Best answer by Airgetlam 14 June 2021, 18:29

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7 replies

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forgot to add that LG TV is OLED55CPUA

I think the problem you’re going to have here (and this is just a guess) is that the Sonos is only as good as the signal being handed to it. They just don’t have much control over anything beyond what the specs of CEC allow. The Arc just tells the TV set that it’s a speaker, and can accept this type of codec. There’s not a ton of “smarts” going on on the Sonos side of things, other than interpreting the codec it’s being handed, so any issues the TV set has sending the appropriate signal just isn’t something that Sonos can do much of.

However, you seem to realize that, so perhaps that last part was for others reading this thread :) Unfortunately, I don’t have a Samsung to give you my own settings, just a couple of Vizios that I don’t have any particular issue with, although both are locked to Dolby Digital, rather than Atmos, due to a failure by Vizio to allow the passthrough of the Atmos signal, and my personal refusal to allow them to monitor my use of internal apps. I’ve used an HDFury Arcana device to interrupt the audio stream going to the TV and pull it out before it gets consumed by the errant TV audio processing, which works well. It just makes me unhappy to spend so much on a TV, and then have the TV fail to pass through an appropriate signal. 

Hopefully someone with a similar or same TV will come along and share their settings. And it’s always, always, always worth double checking for firmware updates for the TV set, and making sure that you’ve checked the settings on any device feeding a signal to the TV. 

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Thanks airgetlam!

The LG TV firmware is up to date. I will delve into the Dish Hopper receiver settings to see if there has been a major change there--it’s the only digital device sending signals to the TV right now.

Caroline

Yea, the unfortunate thing is there are all sorts of devices these days that auto update, without notification. Even Sonos has an option for that.

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Hi @dukiebluedoc 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

As you didn’t specifically mention it, I want to make sure you have tried unplugging the TV from power for 30 seconds?

If this doesn’t help, please repeat, but while the TV is off disconnect any other devices from it and test the Beam on it’s own.

If this now works, add one device back to the TV at a time, testing in between, until you find the device causing the issue. Disable CEC on this device, if possible (Google is your friend in finding out how to do this).

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Thanks!

I have done all the above.

So far, with only the HDMI cable in the ARC HDMI slot connected to the Beam I have NO dropouts, so it is probably related to interference with one of the other cables which I am now testing.

Caroline

I’d jump in another direction on that assumption, honestly. It’s more likely that there’s another device that is causing CEC interference with the ability of the TV to send a clear signal to the Beam. I’d look at turning off CEC on all other connected devices.

Yes, there’s a small chance it’s interference on the cable, but that’s a really small chance.