sky hd new box poorish audio....

grumpynerd

hi, my nan just got a new sky hd box to replace her 8 year old pace box...however the new box came with a sky hdmi cable. Im not sure whther tits the cable or a case of adjusting settings but the sound quality is worse via the new box and the new hdmi than it was last week using a scart cable and te old pace box.

is it known that scart cables carry audio pretty well, or is it just a crap hdmi cable?

_John C

Is it distorted or low ?

grumpynerd

just unclear via hdmi and the volume has to be up twice as high as the old pace box working from scart....

lgs 4

grumpynerd wrote: »

hi, my nan just got a new sky hd box to replace her 8 year old pace box...however the new box came with a sky hdmi cable. Im not sure whther tits the cable or a case of adjusting settings but the sound quality is worse via the new box and the new hdmi than it was last week using a scart cable and te old pace box.

is it known that scart cables carry audio pretty well, or is it just a crap hdmi cable?

No Audio Problems with Humax Freesat HD HDR Box,s

_John C

Theres no audio output level adjustment on the sky hd boxes. Have a look through the tv menus and see if theres an option to increase the audio level on the corresponding HDMI input. On my tv I can adjust different volume levels for each input. Maybe the input you are using is set low. Its worth a look.

BionicRasher

Have found the same on our new Sky HD box.
Prior to getting sky last month we used Freesat through the sat connection in the telly. Volumes would be 12, 13 or maybe 14 to hear shows. Same volume for xbox, nowtv box and chromecast.

Now I am setting the volume up to 30 and sometimes even 35 to hear properly via the sky box.
It's shocking.
Find the picture is not much to write home about either.
Saorview directly to the telly is far superior than the RTE channels on the sky box.

grumpynerd

BionicRasher wrote: »

Have found the same on our new Sky HD box.
Prior to getting sky last month we used Freesat through the sat connection in the telly. Volumes would be 12, 13 or maybe 14 to hear shows. Same volume for xbox, nowtv box and chromecast.

Now I am setting the volume up to 30 and sometimes even 35 to hear properly via the sky box.
It's shocking.
Find the picture is not much to write home about either.
Saorview directly to the telly is far superior than the RTE channels on the sky box.

this is the same for me. I could listen to the old pace sd box via scart on volume 1 and it'd be fine at night time. Now it's 26 during the day and 16 at night and the overall sound quality is just muted or dullish and music sounds quite reedy and feeble.

the sky man said hd boxes receive an hd signal by 'donating' some of the frequency space for the audio channel.....

if I'd known that you get more picture for less audio I'd not have allowed my nanna to 'upgrade' her box...

mossie

Same on Sky Q, very low audio.

muffler

From memory I think there's some way of altering the audio output from the Sky boxes. Im not entirely sure on this so I'll get a look a bit later.

In any event most TVs have different sound modes (theatre, sports, user defined etc) so maybe a wee bit of tweaking there could help.

former total

The Sky HD box doesn't have great audio. It was very noticeable when I switched over from UPC and even now the sound on Saorview is much better.

grumpynerd

the sky area manager came out to check on the engineer's work and I think he called up and got them to adjust my nan's signal as the discrepancy between picture and audio quality isn't as big as after the initial install.

However the sound on the old 2007 Pace box via scart was warm, lively, clear, and loud....the new box looks and sounds rubbish despite being a 2016 model...and tbh the HD picture quality isn't as good as when I got HD for a while back in 2010...

Cherrycola

I find the audio on the sky recordings on the sky HD box dreadful! Have to bump it up way more than when watching live tv.

pegasus1

Buy a 5.1 DD surround system and then you will get quality sound as most HD channels have 5.1 sound...
RTE have a much higher sound than most other channels...Fox channel being the lowest sound...
I even have an active subwoofer connected to the sound system...lots of low freq. sounds on all channels...

grumpynerd

yes each channel varies in bandwidth and how they divide that width between sound and picture. Im quite young so Im not keen to get into middleaged technology harvesting.

for me, the most unobtrusive simple solution is always preferred.

in this case, 720p allows for more audio bandwidth than 1080i

Ive also gone back to using a scart cable and spent a while finetuning etc...

I dont have the glassy perfect hdmi picture, but the sound quality is much better and the picture is within maybe 10% of the hdmi signal...