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ARC intermittent connection loss possibly with Atmos only

RaultTN
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Hi all. So far I think this is isolated to Atmos content however randomly while watching Prime Video or Disney content outputting Atmos (through fire stick 4K) I will lose signal (Beam gen 2 and two one sl’s as surround). When it happens I lose sound, the screen flashes and my tv’s LG logo appears for a second before going back to Disney or prime (whatever I’m watching).   I can push play and everything works again, but almost seems like something with the HDMI arc input is being “lost” for a split second.  Or maybe it’s the signal loss for a split second?  

I’ve changed HDMI cords and powered down both the tv and Beam to try and reset but no luck. Randomly happens, sometimes 5 minutes in and other times maybe 15 in. Any ideas?

fyi I recently changed to using SonosNet (beam hardwired Ethernet) as opposed to all wireless is this possibly an issue that anyone knows about?

Setup as follows:

Moderator edit: Removed picture with serial numbers

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Best answer by RaultTN 10 January 2023, 20:05

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RaultTN
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@Ken_Griffiths  you’ve been instrumental offering your help with my Sonos setup. Any ideas here?  Much appreciated again for all the help my man. I’ll get this system figured out at some point ha. 

Ken_Griffiths

Besides the FireTV 4K attached to the LG TV, I assume you have the Beam connected to the HDMI-2 (Arc/eArc) port, but do you have anything else attached to the TV’s other HDMI ports? if so what are those devices?

Also just curious and probably irrelevant, but which Sonos product do you have wired and where is it wired to? 

I also note the Sonos devices have IP addresses that are set across a subnet range between 192.xx.xx.12 and 171… so do you have a lot of devices on your local network, or have you just set one or two static? 

Is the Fire TV wired (using the FireTV network adapter available from Amazon) or is it wireless and if the latter, do you know which WiFi band it is using?

RaultTN
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Hey @Ken_Griffiths   

Yes Beam connected to HDMI 2 (Arc)  tv shows arc connection  

Firestick 4K in hdmi 1.  And yes I have the fire tv network adaptor so it is hardwired into a switch I have behind my tv.

xbox one in hdmi 3

Beam (gen 2) is hardwired to a switch (same switch as firetv network adaptor) which is wired to my router.  My 2 OneSl surrounds are wireless using SonosNet channel 11 (I switched this from channel 6 hoping it would help  it did not  

I have 45 wireless connections at the moment through a mesh system with 2 nodes throughout the house.  

 

Ken_Griffiths

The setup sounds fine to me - the culprit I think however is possibly the XBox. As an initial test, can you ‘temporarily’ uncable the XBox HDMI cable from the TV and power off all - TV, Arc, Fire TV, for 3 or 4 minutes and then bring all back online (leave the XBox disconnected) and test things to see if the issue goes away… then report back here what you discover.

Ken_Griffiths

I think the issue here might possibly lie with the new CEC control on the XBox... see this link:

https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/704766-xbox-update-april-2022-hdmi-cec-controller

Anyhow, let’s see what happens when the XBox is temporarily taken out of the mix. 

I’m just wondering if one of the new CEC settings on the XBox is perhaps ‘polling’ every now and then .. and that is attempting to steal the CEC focus away from the Beam causing a minor interruption to its sound when playing Atmos audio.. so those are my thoughts 🤔?

RaultTN
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Oh man I did just run an hdmi behind my wall to hook up my Xbox in the last 2 days to this tv. I will try that and report back. I’m curious how that could cause the issue?  And could it affect just Atmos?  You are the man @Ken_Griffiths 

Here is some other info in case it matters:

I think it’s only with Atmos content. I’ve had youtubetv on for the last 3 hours and no connection loss with Dolby digital 5.1. 

I had this issue when I first got my beam and changed all sorts of settings and cables and for the life of me can’t figure out what fixed it but it was fixed for maybe a month. It wasn’t until I changed the Wi-Fi settings yesterday (trying to bond my surrounds to my beam as WM:2) that I screwed something up. I was previously using all wireless (no SonosNet). But now when I go back to that it still breaks up. I also changed my LG settings to Best Available from forcing Dolby Digital Plus, wonder if that is causing any issues?

RaultTN
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@Ken_Griffiths When I power everything back on,  should I plug arc and hdmi cables in prior to powering on Beam and TV or after they’re powered on? Does it matter?

Rick

Ken_Griffiths

See my post above I’ve just edited it to include what I think might be the issue. To briefly reiterate, I think playing Atmos audio, pushes the TV HDMI-2 port bandwidth and when the XBox is connected, it’s new 2022 HDMI-CEC settings are polling every now and then and that’s ‘perhaps’ attempting to steal the CEC focus away from your Beam causing a minor interruption to the audio connection. 

So my guess/suggestion is to first start with removing the Xbox temporarily and just see what happens - then add it back and maybe switch off some or all its CEC controls and see if you can find the CEC setting that’s causing the issue. That’s assuming it is the XBox of course.. removing it altogether temporarily may help to identify if it is that device.

Ken_Griffiths

@Ken_Griffiths When I power everything back on,  should I plug arc and hdmi cables in prior to powering on Beam and TV or after they’re powered on? Does it matter?

Rick

It does no harm to remove the HDMI connections and re-seat them (it’s worth doing)..  I would do that whilst the devices are powered off and then power them on afterwards - just leave the XBox uncabled for now, whilst you then test things.

RaultTN
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@Ken_Griffiths  I had such a good feeling about the Xbox being the culprit however after just testing I got 10 minutes into Encanto (Atmos) and it happened again without the Xbox being connected. 
 

But on a side note my surrounds were not working after restarting and when I went into the Sonos app it asked me to connect to my Wi-Fi network again (I deleted my network last night after establishing the SonosNet). So I am still in that process as we speak.  It’s been stuck on “Getting your Sonos One SL ready” for 5 minutes now.  Could the SonosNet be causing any of these issues possibly?  If so can I still hardwire my beam and use my Wi-Fi (not Sonos net) for my surrounds?  Not exactly sure how to disable just SonosNet unless that is what “disable Wi-Fi” is through tue Sonos app?  What do you think?

RaultTN
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 @Ken_Griffiths   A couple of other things I am trying this afternoon. I had two settings I recently changed on my LG. The first is called “Instant Game Response” which was toggled “On” for hdmi1 (fire stick). No idea if it could be the culprit but there is a warning stating “when initiated the video may blink temporarily”. So we’ll see.  The other is “HDMI Ultra HD”. It also has a warning about potential issues if device is not supported. 

I have also unplugged Ethernet from my beam and now have all devices on Wi-Fi (WM:1) effectively disabling SonosNet (it’s greyed out anyways) so we’ll see how that goes. Fingers crossed. 

RaultTN
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@Ken_Griffiths No luck. Back to the drawing board.

Ken_Griffiths

@Ken_Griffiths  I had such a good feeling about the Xbox being the culprit however after just testing I got 10 minutes into Encanto (Atmos) and it happened again without the Xbox being connected. 

My thoughts, if it’s not the Xbox, are to perhaps next change the HDMI-ARC cable. If it was a network connection, I would have expected Apps, like Netflix etc; to display a ‘buffering’ moniker on the TV screen rather than see the LG logo.

But on a side note my surrounds were not working after restarting and when I went into the Sonos app it asked me to connect to my Wi-Fi network again (I deleted my network last night after establishing the SonosNet). So I am still in that process as we speak.  It’s been stuck on “Getting your Sonos One SL ready” for 5 minutes now.  Could the SonosNet be causing any of these issues possibly?  If so can I still hardwire my beam and use my Wi-Fi (not Sonos net) for my surrounds?  Not exactly sure how to disable just SonosNet unless that is what “disable Wi-Fi” is through tue Sonos app?  What do you think?

I would have just power-cycled the two surrounds. Note the HT surrounds do not use your WiFi network, instead they connect ‘directly’ to your Beam using a 5Ghz ad-hoc connection - the 5Ghz band is used as it’s faster and that helps keep all the HT audio in lip-sync with the video on screen. Whatever you do, do not switch off the WiFi adapters on any of your HT devices… it’s needed for connection between the HT players.

It is worth testing your setup with the Beam either wired (SonosNet) or wireless (often called ‘Station’ mode by some users) and see which works best as ‘sometimes’ wired/switch-linked networks can also have issues, so no harm testing both types of connection. Although I’m not (yet) convinced it’s a network connection issue, but perhaps more related to A/V connections to the LG TV.

Let me know if I can assist further.

Ken_Griffiths

@Ken_Griffiths No luck. Back to the drawing board.

Yes, it’s probably not the local network connections - I would revert back to wiring the Beam back to the switch or better still bypass the switch and wire directly back to the router if that’s practicable.

Do not disable the WiFi adapters on your Sonos products.

I would try a new HDMI cable between TV and Beam.. I would also try the FireTV in a different HDMI port - perhaps try it in HDMI-4 and see if that makes a difference.

You can cable back the XBox now too (leave it in HDMI-3 (if that’s where it was to begin with?)

RaultTN
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@Ken_Griffiths Random thought as I am looking at this “switch” my buddy gave me. Could this be my issue if this is a “cheap” switch and maybe not able to handle what the Atmos pulls from the network?

 

 

Ken_Griffiths

I have come certainly come across faulty switches myself in the past and Ethernet cables too …so maybe just try by-passing the switch (if practicable and easy to do) and just see what happens. 

Ken_Griffiths

Note the switch is a ‘gigabit’ switch, so it is easily able to handle the data requirements. In fact a 10/100 switch would be fine too, but cables and switches do sometimes develop faults - but maybe try your Fire TV 4K setup on its WiFi connection and eliminate/bypass the switch that way. 

RaultTN
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Ok going to Check out the firestick on Wi-Fi only and will see how goes. If that doesn’t work I’ll try the Beam direct from the wall port that the switch is connected too and bypass the switch all together. 

Thanks again sir.

Rick

Ken_Griffiths

@RaultTN,
Did you try switching the Beams HDMI cable, or is that something that you still might try later?

RaultTN
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I have switched HDMI cables with no luck. Also, It just cutout removing the Amazon network adaptor and using Wi-Fi for the Firestick so no luck there. I’ve just hardwired the beam direct into the router so here goes nothing. 
Rick

RaultTN
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@Ken_Griffiths while I am testing the direct Ethernet is there a reason my two surrounds are now “WM:1” (wireless) as opposed to WM:0 which I assume means connected through SonosNet?  Only partially shown in this screenshot but my 3rd One (in my kitchen) is still WM:0?

 

Ken_Griffiths

I’m guessing you perhaps have the TV ‘on’. or playing, when you changed connection. When you power off the TV/stop-playback, they will likely switchover to WM:0 after a few minutes - if not, wait, or maybe try power-cycling them.

Ken_Griffiths

3 minutes after stopping TV playback/putting the TV into standby, the speakers will go into standby too and will likely switchover to WM:0 after that point.🤞

Mr. T
Userlevel 7

@RaultTN - do you know what speed your internet connection is? Is it possibly the stream buffering that is causing you issues with the higher bandwidth requirements of 4K/Atmos

Ken_Griffiths

Actually following in from what @Mr. T mentions there is a test facility on the Fire TV 4K to check if the connection is okay - in the Fire TV settings, goto Display & Audio and scroll down to ‘Audio and Video Diagnostics’ and see what the current capabilities are.

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