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The sound quality on my Playbar has recently become distorted while playing audio from my televison, a sony KD-55X85J running android TV.

The EQ is really off, little to no mids with overly sharp highs and muddy lows. The issue only exists when playing audio from my tv which is connected through optical and persists whether using an inbuilt app or a separate media box hooked up with HDMI to the tv.

the sound quality is fine when playing my music library through the app. playing a number of songs though both the tv and directly through the app, they definitely sound very different.

Been spending a few evenings playing in the settings to no avail.

So far I’ve tried:

changing eq settings of the Playbar: changing the settings no longer seems to do anything at all.

changing eq settings of the tv: no dice, the settings don’t seem to exist when when outputting through optical.

changing audio output signal on tv: no change, but if I set it to PCM then I get no audio at all.

power cycling the Playbar, my network, my tv: no change

I’ve also noticed that the tv audio no longer switches the playbar back to tv source after playing music through the app, It now needs to be manually switched every time. not the worst problem in the world but perhaps related?

I’m at a loss on what to do next, any help would be greatly appreciated

Hi ​@SalsaSam, welcome to the Sonos Community!

Sorry to hear that your Playbar is having issues when playing through the TV. Since the audio is fine when playing music, we can at least say the issue isn’t with the speakers inside the Playbar but instead lies between the Playbar and TV.

You haven’t mentioned it, and I assume you’ve already tried, but I’d suggest trying a different optical cable. If possible, can you also try a different source device, like another TV? Best case scenario is that the optical connection is just loose, 

If you’ve tried the above and still have issues, it makes me wonder if the optical port on the Playbar is somehow damaged. However, I’d recommend contacting our support team with a video of the issue for further troubleshooting, as they have tools to look into your system and help you resolve this.

I hope this helps!

Hi Jamie,

I had indeed tried swapping the optical cable to no avail, sorry for not mentioning it earlier however I did end up seemingly resolving the issue last night.

Running out of options I factory reset my televisions OS (android TV) and the speaker now works over PCM. It seems like a software issue on googles end (shocker). Being that this was a kind of nuclear option I’m still not sure what might be the root cause of the issue but I’m holding my fingers crossed that this the end of it.

Hopefully this solution, while a hassle, also works for others who might have this issue.

Thank you Jamie for reaching out and hope you have a great rest of your week!

-Cheers!

Glad you figured out what to do to correct the issue. BTW..it’s not unusual for an OS update to cause issues with a device. I hear of if quite often with TV’s disrupting audio flow after an OS update. It seems after the install  a reboot is required to fully actuate. My LG after updating will reboot as SOP. 

Hi ​@SalsaSam,

That’s great to hear, thanks for letting us know you fixed it and how you fixed it. And no worries about not mentioning using another cable, I assumed you’d have tried it anyway.

I know a lot of TV OS updates can change existing settings or revert any changes you’ve made previously like ​@AjTrek1 suggested. I’d never be able to tell exactly what the problem was, maybe a setting change on the TV was what caused this or the update didn’t fully go through; a Factory Reset on the TV fixing this makes sense.

Hopefully any other users who run into similar issues can resolve them by following the same process you did. Have a great Friday and weekend too!

Had similar issues here with both Google TV and my new Firestick 4k Max, both needed a power cycle to work properly. The Firestick 'found' another update it hadn't seen when I checked after the power cycle.

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