TV3 - Dolby Digital not working properly

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MarkX

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#150932 8-Aug-2014 10:10

I flicked on TV3 last night and there was a problem with the Dolby Digital sound on the Paul Henry show and the show that preceeded the Paul Henry show.

There was no sound coming out of my centre speaker. Voices came out of the front left and front right speakers and didn't sound very good at all. It is not a problem with my set up because when I changed to TV1 and then TV2 the dolby digital soundtracks were fine with voices coming out of the centre speaker.

Did anyone else notice this problem last night.

jonathan18

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#1104668 8-Aug-2014 10:38

Are you sure the problem's new?

Typically I think this results from a non 5.1 soundtrack being encoded as such, so that audio that would otherwise be destined for the centre chanel under 5.1 is distributed between the two main front channels.

Most amps will just see the DD 5.1 signal and decode accordingly - given there's no data in the centre channel, there'll be no sound from that speaker. Of course, if the original content was in 5.1, dialogue will be encoded within the centre channel.

This has been dealt with in earlier threads on GZ a year or so back. As I said then, for me there's nothing more disconcerting than having a disconnect between the location of voices and the image - unless one is sitting dead-centre or using headphones, dialogue broadcast from the mains will not line up with the picture. As a result I leave our TiVos defaulted to downmix 5.1 content, and will manually switch it back to 5.1 as needed. I remember other posters disagreed with this, so I guess it's horses for courses...

Oblivian

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#1104733 8-Aug-2014 11:21

Had similar last weekend during one of my sleep in mornings channel surfing.

One of those American make-a-buck rich list property sale programs. Music from the surrounds near constant, no vocals. Now and then it would phase in for a few words then disappear again. Switching to the AAC Stream was fine.

It's done it on US show content in the past (which I assume has a proper 5.1 track), putting the dialogue through L/R, and the centre and surround audio through the surrounds at a normal centre like level. Meaning you had super loud footsteps in your ears all the time from the back etc

MarkX

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#1104862 8-Aug-2014 13:35

jonathan18: Are you sure the problem's new?

Typically I think this results from a non 5.1 soundtrack being encoded as such, so that audio that would otherwise be destined for the centre chanel under 5.1 is distributed between the two main front channels.

Most amps will just see the DD 5.1 signal and decode accordingly - given there's no data in the centre channel, there'll be no sound from that speaker. Of course, if the original content was in 5.1, dialogue will be encoded within the centre channel.

This has been dealt with in earlier threads on GZ a year or so back. As I said then, for me there's nothing more disconcerting than having a disconnect between the location of voices and the image - unless one is sitting dead-centre or using headphones, dialogue broadcast from the mains will not line up with the picture. As a result I leave our TiVos defaulted to downmix 5.1 content, and will manually switch it back to 5.1 as needed. I remember other posters disagreed with this, so I guess it's horses for courses...

You may be right. I don't watch many shows on TV3 and the few that I do watch (The Blacklist, Hawaii five o) do come with a genuine 5.1 soundtrack. I will see if I can find another show on TV3 that comes with a genuine 5.1 soundtrack and see if this issue occurs on this show. Hopefully it shouldn't do if it does come with a genuine 5.1 soundtrack.