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Noisy digital audio on LG TVs

I'm having the same issue of intermittent audio drop-outs from an LG CX TV into Triangle active speakers via HDMI Arc or Optical. The speakers use an ESS ES9018K2M DAC.

Interestingly, the amount of drop-outs seems to depend on the source -
  • Standard broadcast TV (Freesat in my case) - drop-outs can vary from once every few minutes to once every half hour or so - bearable but annoying from time to time.
  • PlayStation 5 - produces a large number of drop-outs, at least one every couple of minutes. Changing between PCM and Passthrough on the TV makes no difference.
  • Plex or YouTube apps on the TV - no drop-outs at all. I generally keep the TV set to PCM otherwise the apps caused a horrible digital static noise when set to Passthrough.
Is there a known cheap solution? I see HDMI Arc audio extractors mentioned which would be good if I can obtain one in the UK which will solve the issue. Ideally it would be great if I could continue to control the volume using the TV remote.

Thanks in advance!
 
Dear audio science enthusiasts,

I recently got one of those popular LG C1 TVs. Since I only have a stereo system, but several HDMI sources plus using the TV's apps, I went the easiest audio route for my setup:
(source) -> TV -> optical out (PCM) -> DAC -> analog Preamp
As I realized only after my purchase, the optical out of LG TVs seems to be quite terrible (noisy) across models and LG seems to not care about it. Most clearly it's stated in an FAQ by JDS Labs, who measured SINAD of 81db from one LG TV. Quite a few people complain about stuttering audio as well, coming from some DAC's jitter handling not "expecting" such a terrible source signal. Now my DAC doesn't have that problem*, but I'm still curious if using an HDMI audio extractor may yield a better signal.
So my question is if anyone has tested or seen this measured for LG TVs in particular: optical out vs extracted from ARC HDMI?
I've seen at least one report where people have tried the extractor route without solving their stuttering audio problem, which leads to the question if LG has only messed up the optical output or digital audio output in general.

Here's a thread from AV Forums about the topic.

* DAC is a Lake People RS-06, which the manufacturer claims has a resampling and re-clocking implementation that "almost completely rejects jitter". I have no idea to which % this is marketing mumbo jumbo, but at least I get no interruptions to audio.
LG Oled are ok, sound is crap, crap and more crap, as in no good ever...
 
Samsung TVS also have jitter dropouts over toslink with ESS dacs. I have a top of the line OLED and it is unbearable: dropouts every few seconds or so. I tried a HDMI ARC extractor to coaxial, but it improved just a bit. Curiously, playing USB media or TV apps and unplugging the TV antenna makes dropouts go out. So the TV tuner contributes to jitter problem.

A Samsung support technician came home with a Samsung soundbar, plugged it and it didn't have dropouts. I said fine, but it should work with all dacs.

I solved it by using USB out to dac directly, and it manages volume aswell. I don't know if LG supports USB audio out. However USB audio sounds poorer than toslink without dropouts.
Now I use a USB isolator in between which improves sound quality significantly, by cleaning noisy signal from tv.
I have a Raspberry PI streamer with a SPDIF hat which sounds equivalent to USB from tv with the isolator/reclocker.
 
unplugging the TV antenna makes dropouts go out.
That sounds like you have a ground noise issue possibly on the antenna. Are you in an apartment complex with piped in antenna - or does your antenna wire go out direct to your own actual antenna on the roof. Do you have any antenna amplifiers or distributors in the system?

Does your HDMI extractor have toslink out - that might work better.

If it turns out to be noise on antenna ground, there are low cost filters available for this. See this thread:
 
That sounds like you have a ground noise issue possibly on the antenna. Are you in an apartment complex with piped in antenna - or does your antenna wire go out direct to your own actual antenna on the roof. Do you have any antenna amplifiers or distributors in the system?

Does your HDMI extractor have toslink out - that might work better.

If it turns out to be noise on antenna ground, there are low cost filters available for this. See this thread:
Thanks for the tip, I had both an antenist and Samsung technician check the antenna plug: signal strength was normal and voltage aswell, no pollution from neighbor amplifiers. Yes, it's an appartment complex with piped in antenna, the roof amplifier seems to work well. It's the tv because when the antenna is plugged in, after some minutes on USB or internet app source the dropouts go out, as if the tuning process stopped in the background. Similarly, when I turn on the tv and it loads last internet app or USB source, dropouts are off until I switch to TV. So it is the tv tuner subsystem process that trigger the dropouts. Conversely, after 20-30 minutes into the same channel dropouts space out in between.

With USB, I get short dropouts from time to time aswell, it's not completely eliminated, even with the usb isolator.
I have a Onkyo stereo amplifier with toslink input and it don't get any dropouts, because it's a Wolfson chip. Also with the PI streamer by coaxial output into my ESS dac I don't get any either..

I even tried my dac into my parents' old Samsung tv by toslink and no problems. Dac is a Aune X8 XVIII with linear power supply.

See this about ESS chips and LG by optical: https://jdslabs.com/support/troubleshooting/#category-1-question-5
 
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Thanks for the tip, I had an antenist and samsung technician check the antenna plug: signal strength was normal and voltage aswell.

Those measurements would almost certainly not detect ground noise. And ground noise will not stop the antenna working as it should. However, what it might do - if it is conduced down the HDMI, and through your coax cable to the DAC then it could well add enough noise at the input to the DAC to cause bit errors and dropouts, OR bit errors in the HDMI extractor.

It is certainly worth trying one of the ground isolator devices. A quote from that other thread:

It's pretty much always the issue in apartments. You have antenna(s), lots of cabling, distribution amplifiers, sometimes LV AC power riding on the coax to power in-wall/on roof masthead amplifiers and sometimes even people plugging in Ethernet over Power adaptors in their apartments. It all pours down the coax...
 
Thanks for the tip, I had both an antenist and Samsung technician check the antenna plug: signal strength was normal and voltage aswell, no pollution from neighbor amplifiers. Yes, it's an appartment complex with piped in antenna, the roof amplifier seems to work well. It's the tv because when the antenna is plugged in, after some minutes on USB or internet app source the dropouts go out, as if the tuning process stopped in the background. Similarly, when I turn on the tv and it loads last internet app or USB source, dropouts are off until I switch to TV. So it is the tv tuner subsystem process that trigger the dropouts. Conversely, after 20-30 minutes into the same channel dropouts space out in between.

With USB, I get short dropouts from time to time aswell, it's not completely eliminated, even with the usb isolator.
I have a Onkyo stereo amplifier with toslink input and it don't get any dropouts, because it's a Wolfson chip. Also with the PI streamer by coaxial output into my ESS dac I don't get any either..

I even tried my dac into my parents' old Samsung tv by toslink and no problems. Dac is a Aune X8 XVIII with linear power supply.

See this about ESS chips and LG by optical: https://jdslabs.com/support/troubleshooting/#category-1-question-5
Time to call in warranty if you had several service calls? This stuff should be plug and play. I would not have been as patient.

PS: But I am just a streamer, no antennas or cable boxes anywhere.
 
Time to call in warranty if you had several service calls? This stuff should be plug and play. I would not have been as patient.

PS: But I am just a streamer, no antennas or cable boxes anywhere.
I did call warranty and Samsung replaced the board, to no avail. It's not the antenna, because as I said, dropouts cease afte 20-30 minutes on a channel or in apps/USB. It is the internal OS of the tv that has too much jitter, just like LG. TV tuner does increase jitter it seems. I'm sorry but I like state tv, I need the news and it's my culture. I don't pay for platforms.
 
I did call warranty and Samsung replaced the board, to no avail. It's not the antenna, because as I said, dropouts cease afte 20-30 minutes on a channel or in apps/USB. It is the internal OS of the tv that has too much jitter, just like LG. TV tuner does increase jitter it seems. I'm sorry but I like state tv, I need the news and it's my culture. I don't pay for platforms.

If it doesn't happen when the antenna is not connected, then it by far most likely is the antenna. Interesting, isn't it, that I guessed you were in an apartment building just from that information? It might be that after some stuff has warmed up, it is able to achieve lock, or it may be other process that are changing that enable it to achieve lock - but what they are managing to do is difficult because of the noise coming in on the antenna lead.

I strongly suggest you try the ground breaker device. Less than $20, and get it from somewhere that will take it back if it doesn't help.
 
Just as a data point, my 75" Samsung QLED's optical output from three or four years ago doesn't exhibit any problems that I know of.

The frequency range, though not "tested", appears to be normal on a spectral display in the chain on a DEQ2496 Ultra Curve Pro, dependent only upon the different feeds - some appear to cut off around 16kHz, others don't, or it can be variable with commercials, BlueRay, movies, etc.

The optical goes to an Audio Authority 1177A switch I bought used off eBay long ago, so I have that going for me, which is nice.

There's no noticable noise unrelated to the program, no dropouts except when the feed disappears, no pops or clicks (which might be taken care of at the DAC 2 HGC), so, I'm good here.
 
If it doesn't happen when the antenna is not connected, then it by far most likely is the antenna.
It doesn't happen either when the antena is connected, if I wait long enough. So it is not the antenna. When I unplug the antenna from the tv it switches off the tv tuner process internally and remove dropouts, but it doesn't mean the antenna cable is creating them. If I wait long enough with the antenna cable connected (twenty minutes or so), both USB/apps and tv droputs go out. When I change channel or switch to tv tuner again, they come back. So it is the tv operative system. If it was the antenna, it would always happen with it connected, both tv and usb/apps. It finds lock because the tv tuner process creating dropouts is idle, but not from noise from the antenna.

Both an antenist and a Samsung technician checked with a special tv signal multimeter both signal strength and noise from the antenna, so they can make out a loop if it was there, and the antenist would have warned me about a filter/isolator, since he knew some. Also measured voltage with a multimeter, in millivolts, so no extraneous voltage is on the line.

I searched amazon spain and aliexpress and there aren't any ground isolators for European tv antenna cables, only LTE filters for mobile interference. The link you showed was from Amazon US and their coaxial pointed cable.
 
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A Samsung support technician came home with a Samsung soundbar, plugged it and it didn't have dropouts. I said fine, but it should work with all dacs.

That's to be expected, they don't engineer their TV's to be feed into high end audio gear, they design them to be feed into average consumer stuff. Most of the devises discussed on this site are far far more stringent on what kind of signal oddities they will tolerate.

Not to mention starting with an OTA signal is doing you no favors, as that can have cause all kinds of issues the tv manufactures have worked around for the last 80ish years, specially in urban environments.
 
That's to be expected, they don't engineer their TV's to be feed into high end audio gear, they design them to be feed into average consumer stuff. Most of the devises discussed on this site are far far more stringent on what kind of signal oddities they will tolerate.
I'm sorry, my 2,000$ premium oled TV is meant to work with my 300$ 'consumer' dac. It's not high-end audio gear. My tv is hi-end though. My dac stringent? It is not rather meant to work with a sh*t signal, whatever the gear.
Not to mention starting with an OTA signal is doing you no favors, as that can have cause all kinds of issues the tv manufactures have worked around for the last 80ish years, specially in urban environments.
OTA signal not doing favors? A tv is meant to work with a tv antenna first and foremost. That's what it is designed for in the first place, and not produce audio garbage.
A standard 2009 TV doesn't produce jitter, and a premium 2022 tv does?

Optical output is a universal connection, and as such it should work with all products, not just their soundbars that deconstruct all their jitter.
 
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I'm sorry, my 2,000$ premium oled TV is meant to work with my 300$ 'consumer' dac. It's not high-end audio gear. My tv is hi-end though. My dac stringent? It is not rather meant to work with a sh*t signal, whatever the gear.

OTA signal not doing favors? A tv is meant to work with a tv antenna first and foremost. That's what it is designed for in the first place, and not produce audio garbage.
A standard 2009 TV doesn't produce jitter, and a premium 2022 tv does?

Optical output is a universal connection, and as such it should work with all products, not just their soundbars that deconstruct all their jitter.

People here are trying to help you, whether you find the brain-storming ideas useful or not is another matter. No need to get confrontational.

What's the return policy for the TV? Here in California it is typically 2 weeks everywhere. With Amazon it is a month. If I can't get something to work within a day, I return it. I fully agree with you that a $2k TV should work out of the box, plug and play.

My Samsung 52 LED TV was pretty expensive back in the day, and has worked flawlessly for over 15 years, using Toslink for all these years. So I don't think it is a generic design flaw with all Samsung TVs.
 
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I'm sorry, my 2,000$ premium oled TV is meant to work with my 300$ 'consumer' dac. It's not high-end audio gear. My tv is hi-end though. My dac stringent? It is not rather meant to work with a sh*t signal, whatever the gear.

Compared to an OEM soundbar, or OEM multi speaker sound system your dac is high end. Your dac is going to be far more strict about what it will accept than an OEM system.


OTA signal not doing favors? A tv is meant to work with a tv antenna first and foremost. That's what it is designed for in the first place, and not produce audio garbage.
A standard 2009 TV doesn't produce jitter, and a premium 2022 tv does?

Optical output is a universal connection, and as such it should work with all products, not just their soundbars that deconstruct all their jitter.
Being designed to work with an antenna is very much a matter of opinion/perspective. For example here in the states analog OTA no longer exists. Even digital OTA is barely hanging on here, at 13.3% market share.

Here is a bit of history for you that might shed some light on 2009.


The United States and China are the 2 largest tv markets by far, and both predominantly use cable/internet for delivery. Thus when designing and building tvs, manufactures will focus heavily on those markets needs/requirements.

I can't speak for China but the vast majority of people here in the states use the tvs built in speakers, a soundbar they purchased with the tv, or a Soundsystem they purchased with the tv.
 
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Maybe the BlueSound Node can be a solution, at least it is for me. WiiM also seems to work on a solution, but of course it isn't here now and we don't know if it will work for sure. Also both devices are not exactly cheap.
 
Optical output is a universal connection, and as such it should work with all products, not just their soundbars that deconstruct all their jitter.
I understand and am also frustrated by this.. but my solution at first was to use an AKM-based DAC and dropouts disappeared 99% of the time (dropouts were due to the excellent, but aggressive jitter rejection of ESS DACs, as detailed in this and other threads here). I now use an eARC extractor to a different DAC and 99% of dropouts are gone as well.

As for the coaxial tuner connection, I have never used that, so I can't speak to it. But it sounds like a sort of disconnect between the audio from the internal tuner and the resulting conversion (or handoff) to output audio to optical. I am guessing it doesn't drop out if you use the TV speakers.
 
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