Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler High def audio sync problems

Just ranting:

I have noticed that the HD audio programs have more audio/video syncing problems than their compressed counter parts. It seems to me that the only times I have ever had any audio/video sync problems have been with HD soundtracks. I have looked around the web and it seems there are more sync issues occuring with HD tracks and it isn't player dependent as many players have this issue with one disc or another. I have even read where 2 discs of the same movie have different issues on the same player, one plays perfectly and the other develops the audio sync issue!

My Samsung BDP1600 has had trouble previously(updating fixed these discs) and most recently with Avatar and Iron Man 2 (the firmware updates did not help). I think this sync issue is getting worse as the studios contantly change their protections forcing new updates which IMO look to be of little help for the end user. Would a new player or PS3 help? My research indicates it would not.

Any one else care to vent their frustrations with this issue, climb aboard

I know some older, lower-end receivers also had trouble processing the HD soundtracks in time, which caused sync issues. But those same receivers fed PCM were fine.

My PS3 outputting PCM (not bitstream) has never had a sync issue on any disc.

Thanks Jason, I hadn’t noticed this now I will and it will bug the hell out of me.

I remember i've had a few audio sync issues before. Seemed to be a type of "handshake" issue, powered everything off, then on, and it was fine. Another time, my hdmi cord simply was acting up. Changed the cord and no longer had any problems. Ironically the last audio sync issue i had was playing a dvd in a laptop. I either had to change to windows media player, or had to launch it from a different source other than the autoplay. I can't remember exactly what i ended up doing to fix it.

I have not had any audio problems at all with any Bluray I have played through the PS3.

My PS3 does all of the decoding as I don't have a model that supports bit streaming.

If I could talk like my mouth is behind my words by a split second, I could confuse millions.

I went and tried the PCM coding and not a missed syllable, everything is in perfect sync. I think I had it as PCM to begin with earlier this year and then noticed I didn't have a Dolby HD or DTS HD displayed on the 3808 just Muliti Channel In, changed it to bitstream(audiophile) and that is when the sync problems were first noticed. The Samsung manual claims there to be no difference between this bitstream and PCM yet there is.

So what gives with the HD audio tracks bitstreamed causing so many issues? And not just with my system. Is it from a too slow of a processor in the players(mid to lower end such as mine) to keep up?

Perhaps update your 3808's firmware?

I have a co-worker who has just recently (finally) purchased a BluRay player. He also happens to use a Denon 3808 and he's bitstreaming from the BR player (Sony BDP-S570).

He was just mentioning a few days ago that he had lip-sync and audio dropout problems when playing the DTS-HD audio from the "A-Team" BluRay. He asked if I had any ideas. I told him to check the firmware on the S570 and the 3808. Just today he told me that he checked both last night; the S570 was up-to-date, the 3808 wasn't. So he updated the 3808, and he says it seems to have fixed the problem. No idea if it was a fluke, or if the 3808's F/W really was the culprit.

So, perhaps check on your 3808's firmware?

Having the player decode to PCM would actually take more CPU power.

I'd say the Denon is to blame. For some reason it can't manage to decode the audio and pass the video on, while keeping both in sync.

Compressed audio does have a variable size, so there will be a different number of bits for each video frame. The receiver has to unpack those, and still keep the timing with the video right.

Jason, I assume that you realize now that the reason that the 3808 couldn't display HD when PCM was input was that there was no way to know how it had started out in the player before being decoded to PCM?