BDV-E370 blu-ray sound problem

[DominicRR]

Recently tried to watch two movies on blu-ray but the sound was horribly wrong. The voice of whoever is speaking is very muffled - like listening to someone with ear muffs one.

Just did a factory reset and no joy.

The first movie was Resident Evil 3D. I ended up using the sync menu to watch the film via the TV speakers, which seemed to over ride the home theatre speakers.

The most recent film is Limitless - you basically can't here what the actor is saying. This time if I switch to TV speakers I get the old echo sound problem with both TV and theatre speakers playing against each other.

The BDV-E370 is connected to a Sony 40HX803 via HDMI (1.3 spec).

The trailers seemed to play fine, so I can only assume it's something to do with how the player is trying to stream the HD audio. On Limitless the audio is listed as DTS HD 5.1

Interestingly there is a notice before the menu screen of the blu-ray statign that the film uses the latest blu-ray technology and you shoud check that you're blu-ray is upto date. Duly did an network update and apparently it is up to date.

Terrestrial TV plays fine and I think DVDs are fine too. I've generally been playing blu-rays with no problem. Had a scout through the various menus and couldn't see anything that might solve the problem.

Help much appreciated. Don't like the feeling that my blu-ray player is already technologically defunked after just one year (I thought international standards such as blu-ray were invented to avoid these sorts of problems), and I'm pretty sure this isn't how the director intended the film to be viewed.

[Gregbates]

I have the same problem suddenly with blurry discs.  Standard DVDs aren't so bad. The trailers etc appear to fine but when the speech in the film starts it is severely muffled.  

Any thoughts or similar problems with a solution?

[Anonymous]

Hi there

A couple of things to try, which may or may not help, but worth giving a go.

• Set the "Surround Setting" to "A.F.D.STD"
• Turn OFF "Audio DRC"
• Turn OFF "Sound Effects"
• Turn OFF "Night Mode"

Cheers

[Gregbates · Accepted solution]

Thankyou for your suggestions.
The answers appears to be more straightforward. My daughters cat, obviously feeling hungry had severed one of the cables to the front central speaker!!!
Cable trimmed, reconnected and bingo, perfect Sony sound again !!

[MK_Slinky]

@DominicRR 

Hey there,

Been reading your post with some interest and it seems you are not alone. Just do a Google search and you'll see the scale of this problem.

One post elsewhere which made me laugh and highlights this problem very well was that a person thought they were going deaf because of this issue, dialogue was very muffled and yet the moment a gun shot was heard the neighbours called the police!! That same person was not a fan of tinkering with the menu settings and the only time they appeared was when they sat on their remote!! LOL!!

Many people seem to be blaming the authoring of the discs whilst others say it is an incorrect setting within your AV / TV setup. I see in the previous post a cat was to blame and so there can be many reasons, some of which may not be obvious.

I have heard that customers suffering with the muffled dialogue channel on Blu-rays may also benefit by setting the Audio Out to AMP only instead of TV & AMP. The problem with using your TV speakers is that you experience a situation whereby the 5.1 channel soundtrack is down-mixed into Stereo which causes the dialogue to get a little lost amongst the other sounds.

Quinnicus has mentioned several settings worth investigating, 'Dynamic Range Control' (DRC) is worth investigating. If it is an option try setting Audio DRC to TV Mode. That applies the most dynamic range compression - lowering the volume of loud parts, leaving dialog in the normal range alone, and raising the volume of quiet parts.

Likewise check the other settings mentioned above on your AV System.

If you find a solution please report back which if any helped.

Cheers

[Anonymous]

Those bloody cats - they do all the damage.  They cant help themselves on lovely warm equipment and playful looking cables.

I was looking for a post in regards to a damaged AV Receiver, due to cat peeing on it.  Cant find it.  But found 2 other threads where cats have damaged equipment.

http://community.sony.co.uk/t5/home-cinema-projectors-players/dav-dz280-surround-sound-system/m-p/55...

http://community.sony.co.uk/t5/home-cinema-projectors-players/hs20-and-hdmi-issue/m-p/1474288

[DominicRR]

Wow - I'd completely forgotten about this post.

It's been so long I've forgotten exactly how this issue was resolved, but I think it was loose cables going into the central speaker. I may have neglected to post this at the time out of embaressment.

I haven't had the problem since. I have just had a quick play with the audio settings. Frankly I can't hear much difference adjusting the DCR etc. I think the biggest gripe with theatre systems (in general) is the especially boomy bass, but I've gone into the settings and turned the bass down and sat the bass speaker on a fluffy rug to mute it further still.

On a side note - I was totally losing any faith in Sony customer service as it seems they expect you to ask the community of experienced users to come up with solutions for you. Given the slew of TVs, theatre systems etc they release how can anyone keep up and maintain expert knowledge? The problem is exacerbated by the new funcitonalities and formats they build in - I suspect they just don't have the resourses to make sure older TVs (i.e. last year's model) are updated/updatable to current standards. In all you get the sense that this is an electronics company releasing products as fast as they can to stay competative, with little afterthought for customer service.

This came to a head 2 years ago when I got the new Sony Xperia Z mobile phone (early adopter - oops) reckoning I'd enjoy beaming media from my phone to the TV only to find out my TV couldn't play the phone's video. On top of that the phone (marketed for its swanky HD screen) couldn't download and play HD videos from Google Play or the Sony Video Unlimted service. Surfice to say I didn't think it was fit for purpose and sent it back.

Today, I'm a bit more forgiving and have the Sony Xperia Z3 (Good phone but TV still doesn't recognise it) and am contemplating getting a 4K TV (that early adopter problem again) - but whether it'll be Sony is another matter...

Oh - and my father-in-law's Samsung TV (2 years old I think) does recognise and play video from the Sony Xperia Z - go figure.

I blame my Dad, he swears by Sony, but Samsung just seem to be that little bit more user friendly, and given how badly UK TV is compressed, the colour reproduction etc of any given TV is a moot point - especially when all the 'carefully designed' image enhancement software only serves to move the image away from what the original content creator wanted and, from my experience, makes the sound and video go out of sync (as the TV chip tries to implement all the processing real time).

[KatiePina28]

I had this problem today except the voices were extremely deep and for the life of me, I could not get it to fix in the settings, so the cord in the back of the DVD Blu-ray player that comes out, I checked to make sure there were no cuts or chew marks and then I unplugged that and then plugged it back in and the voices we're back to normal. Also if the cable is loose, the voices will sound muffled/deep. Just unplug the cable, and plug it back in.