HT S40R problem

[andrewfm1987]

Hi there,

After many years my 5.1 unit packed in totally so I upgraded to a Sony soundbar with rear speakers. This means my current set up is a Sony Bravia TV, Sony soundbar and a Sony blu-ray player.

I set it up and tested it yesterday. Dolby Digital/DTS/DTS-MA plays as true 5.1 perfectly but certain 5.1 tracks (like Dark Night of the Scarecrow, and quite a few of the Arrow Video tracks (like Tremors) which are labelled as DTS-MA 5.1 but my unit swears are LPCM) can only come out as stereo, from the front speakers.

I've tried with both Optical cables and with HDMI Arc. No difference is made. I've heard optical cables can only do LPCM stereo, and if I'm reading the booklet correctly (which of course I only did after struggling a lot) the unit itself may only be able to play LPCM as stereo, no matter how many channels the track has.

Is there a way to get around this? My TV and Blu-ray player give the options of audio output as AUTO or PCM, so I can't force it to send or interpret it as DD. Can you buy a seperate decoder to take the LPCM audio from the blu-ray player or tv and put it through the Soundbar unit as dolby 5.1? Thanks.

TV: SONY BRAVIA KDL 40NX703
SOUNDBAR: SONY HT-S40R
BLU-RAY PLAYER: SONY BDP-S1700

[royabrown2]

[Edited 08:30 07/10/2022]

@andrewfm1987 

OK, so this 2010 TV, whose specification does not mention ARC?

https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/televisions-projectors-lcd-tvs/kdl-40nx703/specifications

Though the manual for it does mention ARC, via HDMI 1:-

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/res/manuals/Z009/Z009312111.PDF

But also states:-

HDMI IN 1, 2, 3, 4

Video: 1080/24p, 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 576p, 576i, 480p, 480i

Audio: Two channel linear PCM: 32, 44.1 and 48 kHz, 16, 20 and 24 bits, Dolby Digital

DIGITAL AUDIO OUT (OPTICAL)

Digital optical jack (Two channel linear PCM, Dolby Digital)

i.e. no support for DTS or DTS-MA, either incoming or outgoing. So it’s going to drop to LPCM, which is always stereo only. (Though note in passing that Optical can pass Dolby Digital as well as LPCM, though we shan’t need to utilise this).

At a guess when you think you are getting DTS, the BluRay player is serving up the Dolby Digital track that is also on the disc. But when the only 5.1 audio present is DTS, it is dropping to LPCM for basic stereo when the TV says it can’t handle DTS.

Not that you can get DTS-MA over ARC anyway - that needs eARC - so the best you could get is it dropping to DTS.

The obvious thing to do, given that the BluRay player can pass DTS-MA (I have checked this), would be to plug it into the HDMI In of a soundbar that had an HDMI In and could play the DTS-MA audio, and have the audio directly on the soundbar, with the video passed over the HDMI cable that carries the ARC, for the TV to display.

But this soundbar does not have such an input, so you won’t get any DTS-MA into it.

Nor does it support eARC, only ARC, and it anyway doesn’t support DTS either, let alone DTS-MA.

So if you want to experience DTS-MA, you will need to replace the soundbar you have just bought with one capable of handling DTS-MA, from your BluRay player feeding into it via an HDMI input.

Or, if you get a soundbar having eARC and capable of handling DTS-MA, but with no HDMI In, you then swap out your 12-year-old TV for a modern one capable of handling DTS-MA via its HDMI inputs, and passing it, uncompressed, over eARC to the soundbar.

So, what’s the best you can do with what you have now?

Pretty good, actually.

As regards conversion on the fly, LPCM stereo is already too late to convert, but the good news is that if you set ‘Dolby D Compatible Output’ to On in the Audio settings on your BDP-1900, then this will do the DTS-MA to Dolby conversation that you are looking for. So you don’t even need a separate device, just an existing setting on your BluRay player.

Hopefully, this will cover everything; but if you still get LPCM in certain circumstances, you may also want to set SPEAKER/MULTI SPEAKER/ON in the Settings menu of the soundbar.

This will play detected 5.1 through all the speakers as usual, but will also play detected LPCM stereo through all the speakers, using its own logic to decide what sound comes from where.

So, no DTS possible with your setup, but you should be able to get Dolby Digital 5.1 from DTS instead, and even if some LPCM slips through, you can still have it playing on all your speakers.

Should keep you pretty happy for now!