Lip Sync Issues Playbar and LG OLED65C8AUA


Having lip sync issues with brand new $3,500 LG TV (OLED65C8AUA) and Sonos Playbar. Called tech support and they suggested running optical cable direct to cable box and also suggested changing from Dolby to PCM. Neither of these worked. Has anyone had any luck finding a solution for this? Sonos says they are aware of the issue, but from the looks of this forum they have been aware of issue for a while, but yet nothing is still solved. I think the tech person I spoke with today was googling the problem as I was talking to him as he seemed like he had no idea. He said it is affecting Sony XBR models and LG OLED TV's. Also the tech person said since I wasn't at home they couldn't fully troubleshoot it. When your tech hours are 10am (when most people are at work) and your wait is over an hour when most people are out of work how do you suggest we call when we are in front of the TV??? Maybe Sonos should put on the playbar box that their product doesn't work with the top two TV manufacturers right now. If I could return my sonos system instead of my new TV I would. I have seen posts where people are saying Sonos is awaiting a response from LG and Sony. LG and Sony are producing a quality product and the fact that the tv is not in sync with the playbar isn't their problem. Sonos, you are producing an accessory (soundbar) for a TV. It isn't Sony or LG job to find a fix for you on their end. You are selling a product that supports the TV not the other way around. Good thing I have a friend that works at a large newspaper. Wonder how your sales would fair if people read you product doesn't work with the newest TV's. When are we going to have a fix for this????

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10 replies

Sonos normally adds about about 30 ms audio delay which isn't usually a problem since video is usually delayed. The classic lip-sync problem is caused by the huge images taking more time to process and transmit allowing the much smaller audio to arrive early. Adding audio delay is required to solve that problem. Unfortunately when broadcasters or TV manufacturers try to correct for this (by adding audio delay) they often over-correct and sometimes the audio arrives "already" delayed relative to the video. That is what you are most likely experiencing. I don't know about LG but Sony and Panasonic and Toshiba for example all think they know best (they don't) and add an audio delay equal to their video delay which causes the problem you are experiencing since any additional audio delay (like the tiny 30 ms Sonos adds) may them be visible to you. Those manufacturers that I mentioned (again I don't know what LG does) impose the audio delay and do NOT give the user an option to turn it off. Other manufacturers like Samsung and Vizio allow the user to adjust the audio delay and turn it off. ALL manufacturers SHOULD allow turning off any added audio delay! My company makes lip-sync correction devices for TV and projectors for home cinema and we tell customers to turn OFF all other audio delays any of their equipment provides (AV receivers, TV's and even some set top boxes and BluRay players offer an audio delay.) Unfortunately customers who have a TV that won't allow turning off the audio delay it adds to its s/pdif audio output (or arc output) must route the audio directly from each audio source bypassing the TV and sending it to our correction device and on to their sound system.

In you case I suggest checking your new LG OLED to see if in its audio menu it allows you to turn OFF any audio delay. If so, turn it OFF and also make sure the TV is not in the HDMI auto lipsync mode which can impose an unneeded delay making it impossible to correct lip-sync. Once you turn that delay off you will still have some lip-sync error because there is currently nothing in the video and audio signals to define when they were ever in-sync so "automatic" correction is impossible. The devices we make have a remote allowing shifting audio delay for perfect lip-sync since it changes a little between every progran.

But with the TV's audio delay OFF the Sonos 30 ms delay will help correct the TV's video delay and you may find lip-sync improves. If the LG offers and adjustable delay (?) you could go back and add a little more audio delay and see if you can get close enough. Unfortunately most TV's only offer audio delay in huge increments like 10 or 20 ms which isn't close enough for most people to ever feel it's perfectly in sync. You really need adjustment in 1 ms steps to accomplish that but once you get it close your subliminal defense mechanism to the impossibility of sound "before" the event that creates the sound (looking away from the faces and lips) may take over and keep you from noticing it.

That was documented by research at Stanford over 20 years which showed lip-sync error caused viewers to have similar feelings about the characters as we have about those who don't make eye contact with us. Ironically it is the viewer who is not making eye contact as we subliminally look away when lip-sync is off but the result is most people do not notice (not consciously) fairly large lip-sync error - some upwards of 100 ms - until something comes along (like your Sonos maybe) and pushes the error beyond your threshold of recognition. Unfortunatey whatever device that is (Sonos maybe) gets the blame for the small 30 ms audio delay when in fact the TV or broadcaster may have imposed twice that much error which went unnoticed. If you get a chance please post back here if you find LG offers you the ability to turn OFF any audio delay or adjust it and if doing that solved your problem. I haven't seen any cases where a flat screen TV did not have OVER 30 ms video delay so IF you can turn it off (or bypass the TV) you should be able to counteract the Sonos small 30 ms audio delay.
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Theoretically, there should be not lip sync errors, at least over HDMI. The HDMI standard has a lip sync paramter. So, in the hamdshake each device informs the others above the delay it imposes, and the whole chain should be in sync. Of course, we have no idea if all the devices in the chain support this parameter. (Perhaps someone from SONOS could chime in and tell us if Beam supports this parameter).

That said, I find it difficult to believe that delay at increments of 1 millisecond is necessary. Recall that the video signal is discrete; for normal TV video, each frame is displayed on the screen for about 41.66 milliseconds (assuming a 24 fps video). Therefore, I don't believe one could notice delay of, say, half a frame.

I make sure to turn off any features that enable the TV to “invent” frames (such as picture smoothing), so use “game” or “cinema” mode.

Anyhow, I use my Sonos Beam with a Sony xbr850 and so far the audio and video had been in sync.

You might want to check your setup and see if there is a perceptible delay without the sound system present. The “culprit” might be the signal source.
The Auto lip-sync "feature" (if you call it that incorrectly) in HDMI has absolutely NOTHING to do with the lip-sync error present in the signal you are watching. It is simply a FIXED delay parameter that can OPTIONALLY be provided by the TV manufacturer via the HDMI EDID session. (Essentially "plug-and-play" for AV systems). A TV manufacturer (if they choose to participate) can provide two latency values during the EDID handshaking session: One for progressive and one for interlaced video. These are FIXED values like perhaps 80 ms or 96 ms and have NOTHING to do with the signal being received. Nothing!

If a signal is received with audio already delayed 50 ms relative to the video or audio delayed ZERO the latency value passed to the source from the HDMI equipment will NOT CHANGE. IT DOES NOT correct lip-sync.

What it "would do" (in a perfect world) is keep it in -sync if sources arrived in-sync but they don't.

Your opinion (that no one could detect a 1 ms out of sync condition) was the same as mine until I had the ability to delay audio in 1 ms steps. I finally realized that what we are synching is NOT the diiscreet frames you reference (33 ms for most TV) but the perception in our mind they create. Take for example a film (or video) of a ball thrown into the air. It will rise to a peak and then fall. If one frame captures the ball on its ascent and the next frame captures it on its decent we viewers still "see" the ball at its peak although it is NOT captured on any frame. Audio on the other hand is continuous. If there were a sound - a ding or bong - at the peak we can detect whether it occurs when we "perceive" the visual peak or not. Our first product (DD340) only adjusted in 1 ms increments but we had customers ask for adjustment below 1 ms since they couldn't quite get perfect sync so we added an address line to allow our DD540 (and later DD740) to offer a FINE mode which offers delay in 1/3 ms steps. 1 ms is fine for me but those who are very sensitive to lip-sync error apparently need 1/3 ms resolution.

If you want to know more about lip-sync error and how most people don't see it (consciously) I suggest you Google "audio asynchrony Reeves Voegel" and I'm sure you will find their often quoted Stanford research.
The LG tv I own has a lip sync option that can be adjusted which I have set to 4. Sometimes the audio seems in sync and other times it does not. I can’t ever seen to get it adjusted right. The playbar doesn’t operate over an hdmi cable and it uses an optical cable. I have a Sony XBR65X850B which works perfectly fine with the Sonos Playbar and there are zero lip sync issues.
Would love to solve this problem as it is frustrating to have a $3000 tv which looks like crap when the audio and video don’t match.
Steve,

Do you still watch TV on your older Sony? And still don't notice a lip-sync error when listening with the Sonos?

I ask because one of the most insidious things about lip-sync error is that once noticed our threshold of recognition changes. Those who previously were able to ignore perhaps 80 ms error can often see very small errors after some device inserted enough delay to push that error past their ability to look far enough away from the faces (lip movement) to ignore it.

The insidious part is that we don't realize this has happened. We weren't aware that we were looking away from the character's faces to subconsciously avoid something our brains can not process (the contradiction of reality of hearing sound "before" we see the action that creates the sound.) We may have been ignoring 80 ms error and something (perhaps Sonos's 30 ms) pushes it to 110 ms (for example) and then we consciously notice it and start focusing on the lip movement instead of looking away from it. We don't even realize this has happened.

If you actually force yourself to overcome the tendency to look askanse and focus on the lips almost everyone will see lip-sync error in every program we watch.

On forums like this you will see owners of identical equipment going crazy with lip-sync error problems while others with identical equipment see no problem at all. Often (usually actually) they are both looking at the same lip-sync error. One has an intact defense mechanism and is looking askanse and doesn't notice the problem while the other has experienced larger lip-sync error than his defense mechanism can ignore and now sees very samall errors because he is looking at the faces and not away from them.

Go back and watch your Sony now that you are "sensitized" and no longer look away from the faces sunconsciously.

If there is a silver lining to noticing lip-sync error it's that once noticed you can take steps to correct it and eliminate the negative impact it has on viewer perception as was documented in that classic research at Stanford (Effects of Audio-Video Asynchrony on Viewer’s Memory, Evaluation of Content and Detection Ability by Byron Reeves and David Voelker (almost 25 years ago).

Note that I had a typo in my previous post: Voelker not Voegel was one of its authors.

The paper statistically showed lip-sync error's negative impact on viewer perception of the characters. The adjectives used to describe the feelings the same we would use to describe people who do not make eye contact with us when speaking but ironically it is the viewer who is not making eye conatct as he avoids the impossibility of lip-sync error in the REAL world.

I've mentioned mostly cases where sound arrives "before" the image which is the classic case of lip-sync error but our brain reacts similarly to delayed audio if large enough. It can react to even 1 ms (perhaps 1/3 ms) of audio before the image but may require 20 or 30 ms of delayed audio. The reason is that sound travels about 1100 feet per second so we can see the lips move about 100 ms before we hear their speech if they are 110 feet away. That's what our brains have adapted to and find natural. If that sound arrived in 10 ms instead of 100 it would contradict the visual spatial cues our brain is processing. To "fit" reality the person would need to be less than 10 feet away which would make them perhaps less than 1 foot tall. That would contradict reality almost as much as sound "before" the lip movement and we would likely look askance so as to ignore it.

But if the sound arrived in 90 ms instead of 100 ms we couldn't detect whether the person is slightly smaller or if the distance is perhaps closer to 90 feet rather than the 110 we thought.

So, if you can't have perfect synchronization it's best to have a little excess audio delay than too little.

I've probably told everyone more about lip-sync error than you cared to know but I have worked in this area for over 10 years and still find that it is almost universally misunderstood. Not just by consumers but by manufacturers who add a fixed audio delay to counteract their inherent video delay denying their customer access to that inherent video delay which in conjunction with an audio delay might have solved their lip-sync problem.

When you say your setting on your LG is "4", do you know how much dealy that is? That's another problem even with TV manufacturers who allow audio delay adjustment - too large a delay increment. Most Samsung's adjust in 10 ms steps and Vizio's are usually 20 ms steps. That's too large to ever feel you've reached perfect synch.

I'd suggest setting it at zero and watching awhile and try to detect if the audio is before the lip movement or after. It actually is very hard to tell which way it is off when fairly close. With that setting at zero if audio is AFTER the video there is no way to correct it since it would require an adjustable video delay and there are no consumer video delays (and few 4 K video delays in the commercial market and 8K is not even possible with today's fastest FPGA's). Hopefully the audio arrives first which will allow correction.

But keep in mind when you are adjusting synch it will only be in synch for that one program at that particular time. It can vary radically from one program to the next which is why all dedicated lip-sync correction products need a remote control to allow shifting audio in 1 ms steps while watching the lip movement. Good examples of such products are Alchemy2' D.DaD, Felston's DD740 and Primare's Delay box. They all have a hand held remote which allows audio delay in 1 ms steps and they all delay audio at least 600 ms which should be adequate even for 4K projectors which sometimes require almost 400 ms I am told.
Yes I still watch tv on the Sony which has a Sonos soundbar as well in my kids game room. I don’t notice any issues with that setup even after watching the new LG tv for a while.
Out of the box the LG sound was behind the video and after making adjustments with the sync option on the tv it got better but not perfect. I don’t know what increments it adjusts in on the tv.
When you say "sound was behind the video" initially do you mean the lips stopped moving before the sound stopped? Or the other way around?

And on your LG what is the setting range numerically? Is your setting 4 out of a possible 5? Or 4 out of a possible 10? Or what? I recall Vizio ofers a setting range of 5 I think and 1 is about 20 ms and 5 about 100 ms as I recall.

And do you recall what that setting was in factory default mode (the way LG shipped it) before you made changes?

The next time you are watching the Sony focus deliberately on the lips during a talking head scene and see if you don't see a lip-sync error.
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It’s ridiculous that this problem has not been resolved.
I agree. You would think LG could have fixed this by now.
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For your info, i am having the same issue with Sky Q if using Dolby Sound. Afrer many conversations with Sky and LG this has been my latest correspondence

QUOTE FROM EMAIL SET TO ME BY LG


Good Morning ,

I am emailing you today with reference to your LG OLED65C8PLA TV.

I would first like to offer our most sincere apologies for the issue you have been experiencing, wherein the lip sync is not working correctly between the TV and your Sky Q box. We have investigated this issue accordingly – both with our internal technical team and with Equinox – the company which repairs the TVs and have concluded the issue you are experiencing is consistent with a compatibility issue between the two devices.

This issue is caused due to a ‘handshake’ issue between the TV and the Sky Box caused by HDCP – a form of copyright protection. When these protocols do not communicate correctly; this can result in a wide variety of symptoms, such as: lip sync issues, loss of video and/or audio and interference to video and/or audio. These issues cannot regrettably be resolved through hardware repair and instead must be rectified at the software level.

This issue may be resolved at a later date through an update on the TV should this be required – although more likely Sky will rectify this by patching their boxes as they have done with similar issues in the past; with LG TVs as well as other brands.

We understand that this longer term solution may not be satisfactory for you. If this is the case we can only recommend you discuss this with your retailer for further assistance per your statutory rights.



So basically it is going to take one or the other to fix the issue. But after another conversation with Sky cs today, neither party can tell me when that will be, or guarantee that it will be fixed at all. But any sync issues on LG tvs are not Sonos caused.