Poor sound

almillar

lolly5648 - missing a few details - is it a Sky or Sky HD box, and how is it connected to the TV - HDMI, optical, SCART?
If it's a Sky HD box via HDMI it should be just as good as the Freeview, might be a small volume difference, but there may be something in the TV's menus to change this to try to equalise. What size is the TV?

lolly5648

almillar wrote: »

lolly5648 - missing a few details - is it a Sky or Sky HD box, and how is it connected to the TV - HDMI, optical, SCART?
If it's a Sky HD box via HDMI it should be just as good as the Freeview, might be a small volume difference, but there may be something in the TV's menus to change this to try to equalise. What size is the TV?

We have a Sky HD box which is connected to a Panasonic TXL42ET60 via a good HDMI cable. I have tried to adjust the sound via the sound menu but it doesn't seem to make much difference. I don't know how to explain but I need to make voices sharper because it seems as if they are swallowing their words. I tried when the newsreader was on so I could compare the difference and it was definitely clearer on Freeview.

Thanks for any advice

nickcc

Have to admit to being a right plonker. Tried connecting the optical cable but it wouldn't work and kept falling out the sockets so just used the HDMI cables instead. Thought I would do a search and find out the correct way to fit the optical cable, turned out that there were plastic covers on the end of the cable which have to be removed, works a treat now . The search on AV forums revealed that there are many people that had the same problem so glad to say that I'm not the only plonker.

Arsenal365

Very useful advice guys, had a similar problem but now fixed!

almillar

lolly - on your Sky box, goto the sound settings - one of them can be set to either DOLBY D or STEREO. I'll guess it's set to DOLBY D. Try changing this to STEREO (make sure it saves this change) and see if that helps. Next, I think a Panasonic TV will have different sound modes. It MAY save the different modes for each individual input (ie the internal tuner, which sounds good, and the Sky box which sounds bad) - speech, music etc may be examples. Make sure they're both on the same mode and have the same settings in the Menu.

lolly5648

almillar wrote: »

lolly - on your Sky box, goto the sound settings - one of them can be set to either DOLBY D or STEREO. I'll guess it's set to DOLBY D. Try changing this to STEREO (make sure it saves this change) and see if that helps. Next, I think a Panasonic TV will have different sound modes. It MAY save the different modes for each individual input (ie the internal tuner, which sounds good, and the Sky box which sounds bad) - speech, music etc may be examples. Make sure they're both on the same mode and have the same settings in the Menu.

Thanks, I will have a go at this when I get home.

retiredin2011

If I watch a channel through my Sky+ box I need to have the sound on the TV up to 40 on its scale.


If I watch the same channel through my freeview TV tuner the sound only needs to be at 20.


Most annoying if I switch from HDMI input to TV input.


It is also most annoying that I have to do this as there is no STV+1 on Sky.


When is STV+1 going to be on Sky?


This is a rhetorical question, STV are too stingy to pay the money

almillar

retiredin2001 - yes the internal tuner is often loudest. There's no way to adjust the volume of a Sky (HD if you're talking about HDMI?) box, but your TV MAY have some adjustments for the volume of the inputs buried in the menus, as I advised lolly in post #16 above. Have a play with the STEREO/DOLBY D settings as well from that post, STEREO may be louder.

lolly5648

almillar wrote: »

lolly - on your Sky box, goto the sound settings - one of them can be set to either DOLBY D or STEREO. I'll guess it's set to DOLBY D. Try changing this to STEREO (make sure it saves this change) and see if that helps. Next, I think a Panasonic TV will have different sound modes. It MAY save the different modes for each individual input (ie the internal tuner, which sounds good, and the Sky box which sounds bad) - speech, music etc may be examples. Make sure they're both on the same mode and have the same settings in the Menu.

Thanks for your advice. I changed the Sky HD to stereo rather than Dolby but didn't seem to make much difference. I did however find the auto gain control which seems to have minimised the difference in volume between Sky channels and Freeview.
Perhaps Retiredin2011 will find this helps him (or her)

almillar

lolly - that's the one. Not all TVs have this so think yourself lucky! Hopefully that will help others with a similar problem...