Head Scratcher - TV Sound

[Wombat]

An old mate of mine used his 'dumb' Panasonic plasma TV with a nondescript soundbar connected via optical interconnect.

He added a recent model Nvidea box via HDMI to smarten up his TV. All worked well.

Then he replaced the soundbar with powered speakers using the same optical connection. This works for the TV alone but not with the Nvidia box.

Any ideas??

 

[Blumlein 88]

Might be related to this issue.

https://support-shield.nvidia.com/shield-tv-user-guide/#t=Audio_Routing_Policy.htm

The audio routing policy of the Nvidia might prevent it from working if sound is also going elsewhere.

 

[Wombat]

What puzzles me is it works with the optical soundbar for TV or Nvidea but only with the TV for the optical powered speakers using the same optical interconnect.

Can it be that the HDMI connection connection from the Nvidia doesn't split the sound off in the TV?

 

[Blumlein 88]

What puzzles me is it works with the optical soundbar for TV or Nvidea but only with the TV for the optical powered speakers using the same optical interconnect.

Can it be that the HDMI connection connection from the Nvidia doesn't split the sound off in the TV?

That would be my guess. These newer HDMI protocols are tricky. The various ways it will let you send and return for various devices is always tripping me up.

I'm using a projector fed from a Marantz pre/pro. The projector has sound on it. If I do that, and send HDMI from a computer it won't let sound thru to my speakers, only thru to the projector. I have to go disable sound in the projector before it will let the sound go to my large speakers instead. And sometimes it gets into a situation where if I only wanted sound and no picture from the computer, I have to turn on the projector which then lets it return sound over HDMI and to my large speakers. I can turn off the projector after that and it stays that way. If I turn off the computer I have to go thru this again to get sound only from the PC.

So I am guessing what you are experiencing is some goofy situation with the HDMI.

 

[BDWoody]

What puzzles me is it works with the optical soundbar for TV or Nvidea but only with the TV for the optical powered speakers using the same optical interconnect.

Can it be that the HDMI connection connection from the Nvidia doesn't split the sound off in the TV?

Did the sound bar process as multichannel? Might need to change the optical output settings on the TV so it is bitstream vs PCM vs lpcm vs 5.1 or something similar. Not sure if there's a passthrough setting and if you'd need to change something similar on the shield...

I assume a DAC isn't connected to the Shield, because I believe that disables audio over HDMI.
I remember having to mess with it... Didn't seem clear what was happening.

 

[ZolaIII]

Try to see to what is HDMI sound format set on TV and set it to PCM (Panasonic default is beatstream), hope it helps.

 

[Wombat]

Thanks guys. I passed your advice on to him.