Sky Digital - Sound Quality

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kiwipearls

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#15098 4-Aug-2007 09:58

I watch Sky mostly through my Toshiba SD-42HK Home Theatre system to enjoy better sound in my tv viewing.

Recently I have noticed that the sound quality coming through my speakers on all sky channels sounds (please excuse my descriptive word in advance) Squiggly. It has a weird squiggly noise. This noise comes out all my speakers.

At first I thought, oh dear, my home theatre system is on the frits again(as it had just being repaired due to a faulty internal power supply shorting out everything). Well when I play a DVD I get perfect sound. No noise, no squiggly type fuzzy sounds. Sounds just like I am in the movie.

Now I have never ever noticed this problem before. I would say I've noticed it greatly as an approximation over the last month.

Now I know Sky did some updates a while back where they changed the picture format. Found this little bit of information when my Philips 29 inch TV was having an issue where it was expanding and shrinking the picture at its own will. And I was told that sky was broadcasting in a different format and some TV's can't handle it. But I knew that was not my problem as this was happening by not watching via sky, and also viewing DVD's. Well we got that fixed and it turned out my Philips TV was faulty too and I managed to get that fixed under Consumers Guarantee act.

I don't know if I have everything hooked up right, well the sky man did it. I said I want to have Sky sound run through my home theater system. So he did that, plus we also have it tuned into a normal channel to use the TV speakers (which the picture quality is not as good this way, as faint horizontal lines that once you notice them, you can't help but see them(well for me anyways))

Here is how it is hooked up.

From the sky decoder box (sorry don't know how to find out model, so if that is required to help me, please explain how I find it (there is no label with a model number on the front or back)) the TV scart runs into the DVD player with the Red, white and Yellow plug things and then DVD player goes into AV2 on the TV. And the Video scart does the same running into the back of the Video - TV/AV1. (I don't know how to hook the vcr up to have it run the sound through the DVD player - but it is not a problem watching tapes through normal tv speakers every now and again).

The dvd monitor out is then sent to the back of the tv in monitor in (to get the picture)

There are also other wires that I don't really know what they are doing, but they are plugged into a Prolink AntPdium power divider.

Is there a fix or a simple work around to this. Is it something that needs to be changed in the sky.

Please excuse my naievity to the technical jargon. I know a little bit, but haven't really sat down to figure out other ways to hook things up. So please reply in the most basic way possible for me.

All feeback/answers greatly appreciated.

"In the real world as in dreams, nothing is quite what it seems" - The Book of Counted Sorrows

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#81081 4-Aug-2007 10:32

Do you have your receiver set to stereo or dolby surround while watching Sky? If it's just set to stereo you should only get the Sky audio coming out of the front speakers - does this unusual sound come out of the rear speakers at the same time?

I'm also assuming it's not a humming sound that you are hearing and that all the power plugs are plugged into the same wall socket? Humming is a very common problem caused by a ground loop but this can normally only occur when devices are plugged into different power cicuits in the house.

stuzzo

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#81094 4-Aug-2007 11:51

sbiddle: Do you have your receiver set to stereo or dolby surround while watching Sky?

I think this is the key as I have noticed the "squiggly" sound too through rear speakers.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I think it is the result of the pro logic decoder decoding a 2 channel signal that has not been mixed in dolby surround ie a pure stereo mix. If it's annoying just switch to stereo for these shows.

kiwipearls

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#81095 4-Aug-2007 12:21

sbiddle: Do you have your receiver set to stereo or dolby surround while watching Sky? If it's just set to stereo you should only get the Sky audio coming out of the front speakers - does this unusual sound come out of the rear speakers at the same time?

I'm also assuming it's not a humming sound that you are hearing and that all the power plugs are plugged into the same wall socket? Humming is a very common problem caused by a ground loop but this can normally only occur when devices are plugged into different power cicuits in the house.

Thank-you for your prompt reply.

By receiver, do you mean my DVD Home Theatre system with built in Amplifier?

If so...I have it on Dolby Pro Logic normally - which is meant to detect the best output? Isn't it? And have the surround sound out of all speakers the way the movie makers intended the sound effects to go. <--- very simple logic there, I know. But my best understanding of how it is all meant to work.

Just have tested it now with the different sound modes - the sky channel on at the time was E!

Results with the sound modes available on my dvd system:

Hall 1 - no squiggly fuzzy noises - but no sound at all on center speaker
Hall 2 - no squiggly fuzzy noises - but no sound at all on center speaker
Theatre - no squiggly fuzzy noises - all speakers have the same sound coming out.
Dolby Pro Logic - Yes squiggly fuzzy noises out of 4 of the 5 speakers (front left front right, rear right, rear left) - the center speaker does not appear to have the noise. And the 5:1 is diverting the sounds of whatever we are watching to the right speakers for the sound effects/music/voice...so they are all coming through, but with the weird squiggle sound.

I feel like a noob for not testing this before posting.

But, like I said, I have never heard these sounds before and have had Sky digital for a few years now. Also, with the new slimline silver decoder, which I just checked is a Pace DS320 (read some other posts that refer to checking the underside for which model we have), I haven't heard these squiggles in sound before. If so they were unnoticeable, but are noticeable now.

Sky movie channel 20

Had the same results. But less overly audible squiggles.

Sky channel 2 - TV 2 via 2 set to Dolby Pro logic, had no squiggles, could hear the voice coming from the front speakers, and the only sound coming from the back speakers, was the music. Which was perfect.

So why are some channels alright via Sky than others in regards to the Dolby pro-logic not detecting (again unsure how it works technically) how to divert which sounds to which speakers.

There is no humming sounds due to power circuit things.

Sorry my description of the sound isn't really too good. I'm kinda hear the sound and visualise what it looks like in my head, if that makes any sense. It is also, as if there is a ghosting/echo'ish, or higher pitch to the sound, especially if someone speaks high pitched. Grrr...so hard to describe....sorry guys.

It is just frustrating, as I haven't done anything to change the way my system is wired or set, and have never heard these nosies to the point where I notice it and it becomes annoying and unpleasurable to watch a movie on sky. And I don't think I've all of a sudden developed super hearing powers either, if anything, the older you get, the less you hear (not that I am old, only 32).

"In the real world as in dreams, nothing is quite what it seems" - The Book of Counted Sorrows

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kiwipearls

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#81096 4-Aug-2007 12:27

stuzzo:
sbiddle: Do you have your receiver set to stereo or dolby surround while watching Sky?

I think this is the key as I have noticed the "squiggly" sound too through rear speakers.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I think it is the result of the pro logic decoder decoding a 2 channel signal that has not been mixed in dolby surround ie a pure stereo mix. If it's annoying just switch to stereo for these shows.

Hey there,

In writing my reply to the first guy, I was kinda thinking what you have just replied.

But in watching a program or a movie via sky, how are we supposed to know which is not a pro logic program? (apart from hearing the squiggles)

I thought most movies are in Dolby (ie at the beginning of movies at the theartre you always get the dolby surrond sound ad that sounds really awesome), so therefore it should decode the signal and divert the approrpiate effects to the correct speakers for output.

And I also thought that seeing we are paying for Sky Digital, for digital picutres and sound, that they broadcast in Dolby. So it seems that I am mistaken there, maybe? Again I don't fully understand how it all works

So I guess, If I hear the squiggles the best sound mode to use would be on my system - Theatre (so all speakers have sound coming out) and if I don't hear squiggles, Dolby pro logic.

"In the real world as in dreams, nothing is quite what it seems" - The Book of Counted Sorrows

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stuzzo

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#81097 4-Aug-2007 12:42

kiwipearls:
Sky movie channel 20

Had the same results. But less overly audible squiggles.

Sky channel 2 - TV 2 via 2 set to Dolby Pro logic, had no squiggles, could hear the voice coming from the front speakers, and the only sound coming from the back speakers, was the music. Which was perfect.

So why are some channels alright via Sky than others in regards to the Dolby pro-logic not detecting (again unsure how it works technically) how to divert which sounds to which speakers.

That's quite interesting actually and there will be others who have more knowledge of Sky broadcasts than me. TV 1,2 3 you would expect to be fine for dolby surround as they have been set up like that for some time (broadcast via nicam) for content that supports it and so would go out from Sky that way. I would have thought Sky would use an appropriate 2 channel surround mix for at least their movies.

sbiddle

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#81099 4-Aug-2007 13:17

kiwipearls:
If so...I have it on Dolby Pro Logic normally - which is meant to detect the best output? Isn't it? And have the surround sound out of all speakers the way the movie makers intended the sound effects to go. <--- very simple logic there, I know. But my best understanding of how it is all meant to work.

Dolby Pro Logic is quite different to Dolby Digital.

Dolby Digital has 5 completely seperate audio channels which are encoded into a digital audio stream.

Dolby Pro Logic is not digital and is created by mixing a left, centre and right audio feed into a stereo signal. The centre speaker can easily be extracted from this and the surround is simply a mono feed (ie both speakers are the same) extracted by passing the audio through a low pass filter and adding a delay so it's out of phase with the front speakers. It's now very very old techology and doesn't really share anything in nothing like Dolby Digital.

Dolby Surround is not an "automatic" setting. Setting your amplifier to Dolby Surround when the signal is not encoded in Dolby Digital will sound terrible as most of the sound will come out of the centre speaker and audio from the L + R + surround speakers will be quite weak as there is nothing to decode. Unless the show is encoded in Dolby Surround you're far better using stereo mode as it will sound a lot better.

As for the % of shows encoded in Dolby Surround that's something I can't answer but I'm sure somebody on here would be able to. My guess would be that all of Sky's movie channels will have Dolby Surround and a channel like Sky 1 would have a lot of their general content in Dolby Surround. I would be surprised if any other Sky channels have any content at all in Dolby Surround.

Quite a few of the feeds Sky receive are now in Dolby Digital however Sky don't currently transmit anything in Dolby Digital. Hopefully that will change at some stage in the future.

andrewcnz

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#81106 4-Aug-2007 14:29

Sometimes the sound from sky can sound like a poorly encoded MP3. A really wishy washy sound for lack of a better term. Noticed it more on food tv, E! and living channel.A low bit rate perhaps?

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paradoxsm

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#81107 4-Aug-2007 15:12

i'd go with the audio bit rate. I remember back in the early 90's when the radio stations went compute based. The audio quality just went horrible the budget surround system.
The music was 192kbps mp2.
i still have a couple of the machines running in virtual mode to this day and the original hard drives stashed somewhere in the box with the reel to reel. , yes i have far too much junk.

sbiddle

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#81114 4-Aug-2007 16:14

paradoxsm: i'd go with the audio bit rate. I remember back in the early 90's when the radio stations went compute based. The audio quality just went horrible the budget surround system.

The music was 192kbps mp2.

i still have a couple of the machines running in virtual mode to this day and the original hard drives stashed somewhere in the box with the reel to reel. , yes i have far too much junk.

ZM in Wellington sounds absolutely atrocious now. They are the worst station by far, terrible compression with no dynamic range. They're not interested in their listeners anyway - their change to a single frequency (rather than one for Wellington and another for the Hutt Valley where KauKau isn't visible) using multiple transmitters has resulted in so much multipath interference that the signal is terrible now no matter where in Wellington you are.

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#81118 4-Aug-2007 17:07

I've noticed that in the Hutt Valley with ZM. The reception is now worse. There wasn't any great hassle with changing the station on the car stereo to the other frequency. Would it not have made more sense to boost the power of the Wellington based transmitter?

Check out my LPFM Radio Station at www.thecheese.co.nz - Now on iHeart Radio, TuneIn and Radio Garden

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kiwipearls

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#81119 4-Aug-2007 17:16

sbiddle:
kiwipearls:
If so...I have it on Dolby Pro Logic normally - which is meant to detect the best output? Isn't it? And have the surround sound out of all speakers the way the movie makers intended the sound effects to go. <--- very simple logic there, I know. But my best understanding of how it is all meant to work.

Dolby Pro Logic is quite different to Dolby Digital.

Thanks for your reply. That's probably where I get confused.

My home theatre system is a little over four years now, expensive for what I paid for it though compared to what there is you can buy with that type of money now. I haven't really done too much research into what sort of system would be good now.

I have looked at Sony Amplifier systems as I wanted to buy a Dvd Recorder (and don't really want to buy one with the built in amplifiers, when a DVD recorder without is pretty affordable) plus the Sony Amplifiers I have seen allow for so much more. (although I am aware I can hook up a second DVD recorder to my existing DVD Player (which has the amplifier built in).

I guess technology is moving very fast. And because it is cheaper to stay home and watch movies, I would love to have the best sound system.

I should also point out the squiggly type sound I hear, is not overly loud, you hear it more when you press your ear up against it. But it can be annoying if I know it is there.

And when I did the earlier test with TV2 played through sky, The Amazing Race was on, and worked fine on Dolby pro logic, no squiggly sound. So at least I know there are still some programs, even newish ones, that are still recorded or broadcast in that format.

Thanks for the help everyone :-)

"In the real world as in dreams, nothing is quite what it seems" - The Book of Counted Sorrows

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kiwipearls

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#81145 5-Aug-2007 08:58

I read my DVD manual, and my system has DTS, dolby Digital and Dolby prologic. So I guess I will need to have a fiddle with it to get the right sound, if the sound does not sound right with each movie. We mainly use sky through the Home Thearter so we feel like we are at the movies...lol

"In the real world as in dreams, nothing is quite what it seems" - The Book of Counted Sorrows

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#81149 5-Aug-2007 09:08

Can you force your Home Theatre receiver in to stereo, ie bypass the Dolby Prologic decoder, does this then fix the issue?

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stuzzo

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#81150 5-Aug-2007 09:11

Listened to Sky Sport last night through the Home Theatre set to pro logic....may I mention the great Hawkes Bay Rugby victory?

During the commercials there were good rear speaker sound effects and during the commentary there was just static and the occasional "squigglys" from the rear speakers albeit at a quite low volume possibly backing up the idea that what you are hearing relates to whether the 2 channel sound has been encoded for dolby surround or not.

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#81156 5-Aug-2007 09:56

With Dobly Pro Logic I get squiggly noises, but can only hear them if I put my ear hard to speaker.
It'll be worse in a mono broadcast as all the sound will come out center speaker and the amp will knock down sounds going to other speakers.

For some reason on Sky movies 2 I only get sound on center speaker, watch same movie on movies 1 and it comes out all speakers.
Also I have to turn the sound way up on movies as it's quieter then then other channels, but when there's action in the movie it goes real loud and can make you jump more.

If you put it in stereo i.e. by pass pro logic, will probably only have sounds come out front speakers.
Except for things like news or old programs, it's pretty poor having mono broadcasts in this day and age.

Star trek next Generation was broadcast in mono to on prime Sundays. (Not sure if still is). But Deep Space nine is in stereo. I know both programs were in stereo when first broadcast on TV3 so I don't know what game Sky is playing.

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