Lack of Volume (1 Viewer)

[Brian^K]

I have my Samsung HL-S5087W DLP hooked up to my Samsung HT-Q40 Home Theater System via optical audio cable. I've got sound, but at MAX volume on the Home Theater System it is only mildly loud, and not nearly loud enough for my wife (she's hearing impaired). Any ideas?

 

[Cees Alons]

Brian,

Welcome to the forum.

Is there a setting in your player (in connection with the optical connection) that can be set differently? Or on the receiver?

Also, did you try another source (e.g. "stereo", or the coax) to find out if the HT-set can deliver enough volume for your room?

If it can, there must be a setting (or a dial) that would give enough volume level on through the optical connection as well, or else there's something wrong with that connection (rather unlikely).


Cees

 

[dany]

Check your mute.

 

[Brian^K]

The home theater has a built-in DVD player, which was delivering excellent volume. I looked everywhere for settings to change and nothing made any difference. And I didn't have mute on.

What I have tried is rerouting the sound. I've moved the toslink cable; it was originally carrying sound from the television to the home theater -- now I have it carrying sound from the HD cable box directly to the home theater. That seems to have addressed the problem. It does pose another problem: Only two ports in the home theater appear to support DD5.1. The toslink is now occupied by the HD cable box, and the RCA red/white ports are occupied by my TiVo. Of course, that means my setup cannot support another DD5.1 input. Hopefully that won't turn out to be a problem....

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I was a little confused by your reference to "red and white RCA ports" as digital inputs, since these are always analog inputs, so I downloaded the user guide for your HTiaB. And none of my three TiVo Series 2s supported Dolby Digital or had optical or coaxial digital outputs, although I suppose you might have a different model.

As I suspected, your unit has only a single digital input, the optical or "Toslink" port. Some systems have multiple digital opitcal ports, others have one or more optical ports and at least one port for a copper digital cable. (These use a single RCA style connector, color-coded orange.) The two red/white analog stereo inputs would support Dolby Pro Logic matrixed surround sound, but not Dolby Digital discrete 5.1 or 7.1.

The other way to get true 5.1 or 7.1 sound without a digital connection is through analog connections from source to amplifier that run on 6 or 8 individual wires. But your Samsung does not have inputs for that.

Finally an HDMI input would carry both digital sound and picture from a source device to the target, but the Samsung doesn't have one of those, either.

It was precisely the lack of sufficient external connectivity that made me abandon a really good deal on a similar unit from Philips a couple of years ago and end up with a separate DVD changer and receiver. In fact I now have two disc changers and an HD-DVR, all connected via component video and optical audio to the receiver, which in turn sends the video through a single component output to the TV and acts as a swticher for the system.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Brian^K]

Well, hopefully, for now, we'll make do with this. I just bought this HT, and I doubt Circuit City would take it back because I didn't do enough research.

I may have resolved my problem, at least for now: I originally had my cable box and TiVo feed their audio into my television, and had the television feeding audio into the HD via the Toslink port. Now I've switched to having the cable box directly connected to the Toslink port, and the TiVo connected to AUX1, and I seem to have decent volume (but as you said, no 5.1 from the TiVo).

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I'm willing to bet the the Toslink port is only there to output digital sound from your DVDs and wouldn't work with the TiVo material in any case. So you haven't really lost anything in this regard because you'll be using the Samsung to play your pre-recorded DVDs.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Brian^K]

Interesting. Why do you think the Toslink won't work with recorded programs coming off the TiVo? I'll have to check that in the documentation.

Incidently, in another thread, I think I've gotten the definitive answer to my original issue. It comes back to HDMI handshake. So, cable box to television via HDMI: Cable box says, "Hi there! What are you?" Television says, "Hello! I'm a stereo device." So the cable box sends only stereo to the television, so the television can only be sending stereo to the home theater. I had the home theater set up for DD PLII or Matrix, which accounts for the lack of volume. Same story with the analog audio cables connecting the Pioneer 810HS: They only send stereo to the television, so the television only can send stereo onto the home theater. Bypassing the television, in each case, obviates the problem -- though I'm not sure about that part of it.

 

[dany]

My toslink from my TiVo goes to my receiver and works fine. The reg L&R goes to my TV and also works fine.

 

[Brian^K]

Yup, that would make sense: Digital audio should be connected to the digital audio capable device; analog audio should be connected to the non-digital audio capable device.

Can I ask, though: If you have the toslink connected to your receiver, why do you have L&R connected to your television?

 

[dany]

Because i dont want my receiver on for all my TV viewing.