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HW-K650 and Two R1 Wirelss Speakers in 5.1 With KS7000 TV

(Topic created on: 07-12-2016 01:35 PM)
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podavies
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When using the K650 sound bar and two R1 Wireless speakers in surround sound mode over wifi with the latest firmware, The quailty of the sound K650 drops, sounds very muddy. As soon as you use the sound bar on it own, the sound bar improves. this is happening for a quite a few users.

 

can you help.

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Robbienobs
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Surely the actual decoding is the same for all output methods 😕
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simon_w
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@Robbienobs wrote:
Surely the actual decoding is the same for all output methods 😕

Yes and no...

The optical connection - TosLink doesnt support as many formats and bit rates as HDMI as it doesnt have the same bandwidth.  It can carry PCM stereo, and Dolby Digital 5.1 / 7.1 and DTS equivalents but not the True HD versions or more than 2 channels of PCM

 

HDMI 1.3 and later can carry up to 8 channels of PCM (lossless) audio up to 24bit 192kHz and Dolby True HD / DTS-HD streams.  HDMI also supports ARC - where the audio and video travel in opposite directions to one another.

 

Because of the above and the fact that most devices have multiple HDMI inputs and only one optical input it is quite possible they have separate decoding paths running separate firmware.

 

The WiFi system will be quite different because it is effectively having to piggyback on another system with knowing how resilient or fast it is.  With any IP based audio system the key is minimising the amount of data sent and adding lots of redundancy to ensure that the receiver can "keep up".

 

My suspician is that some piece of code in the soundbar, shared by the HDMI and WiFi codecs but not the optical path, is failing to honour the Dolby protocol properly and is reporting incorrect dialnorm level information in the surround signals. (Dialnorm is defined when you author in surround and says what level the mix was done to). What I am going to attempt to do is author some test files Adobe Media Encoder and try and find out where it breaks down - for example does DTS work but not Dolby - or is it related to the bitrate or the DialNorm setting...

 

This sort of problem is more common than you think - the simplest things can get missed... When Philips launched the first CD player with both analogue and digital outputs nobody noticed that the digital out had the left and right channels reversed - very embarassing and before the days of a "firmware fix"...!

 

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Ciechom
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I see expertise knowledge here :smiling-face: so maybe it will not be too much if I ask you guys to not focus only on the sound level in rear speakers but also on the Digital Dolby & DTS decoding and surround sound it self which is produced by this setup. 

I tried several sources recorded in DD 5.1 and at least for me this is not a real DD 5.1 but something which only sound like a surround sound ie in one of my sources speaker says "this is the right side" and I hear sound from right side of soundbar but also from right rear speaker.

A moment later speaker says "this is right surround side" and the same as previously I hear sound from rigth side of soundbar and rihgt rear speaker as well. Only level of the voice is different and in second situation a little bit louder in rear. IMHO this should not work like that. On my "proper" old audio system the same test was played properly and when speaker said "right side" I heard only right front, when said "right rear" I heard only rear speaker ... unfortuantely can not back to old system anymore 😞

 

Can anyone make similar tests ? Maybe my sound sources are not correct or I made some other mistake in my setup


PS:
In TV -> Sound settings -> Expert settings -> Sound Format ... i tried both options: PCM and Dolby Digital ... same also combination with HDMI sound format "PCM & Bitstream" ... all combinations gave me the same results.

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Robbienobs
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Great explanation thanks.

Good to have you on board and will certainly show this to the engineer when he/she arrives........ May roll out some red carpet and put a banner up............ Oh and lock the door behind him hehe

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Robbienobs
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Hi Ciechom

I had exactly the same issue with channel crossover during tests until I tried an MKV file sent to me by Podavies by email; I think originally it cam from Leelazer.

I will have a look on my emails and see if I can find it, it was back in December so make take some time.

Unless the guys mentioned above have a copy hand. This was the only test file I got a good clean surround sound result from.
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Robbienobs
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Found it. If you pm me your email address I will send it to you.

Just put it on memory stick and plug in tv
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Peejay84
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I have the same issue sometimes.   Delete  your sourround group in the app,restart it and make the group again. It fixes the problem for me... until it happens again.

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Robbienobs
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Had a response from Samsung

 

"Good morning Mr H*****, thank you for providing this update. I have requested any information available from our AV department on the soundbar software version and will return to advise where possible.

 

I will confirm with our service centre on availability for a weekend visit, as we are the manufacturer we work with a network of Samsung-trained service partners around the country, one of whom will attend"

 

I have stated weekends is my preference due to work commitments but will work from home if I have to. 

The start of the email is my questioning what the latest soundbar update is for. 

 

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simon_w
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I've done some more testing today to see if the problem is related to the way the surround is encoded - in short, it isnt !

 

I have done some test encodes at different bit rates and different dialnorm levels in both Dolby 5.1 and DTS 5.1 and while I can get the overall level to vary considerably the offset between front and rear when connected by WiFi remains consistent.

 

With the Soundbar and R1s set to the default "equal" level there is approx a 32dB offset - this is reduced to around 20dB when the soundbar is set to min and the R1s set to max.

 

The offset measures as volume independent - although subjectively it seems as if the surround speakers are louder the higher the overall volume - this is what I would expect.

 

However what I keep coming back to is the fact that the required volume setting for comfortable listening changed at the same time the surround was broken (and the WiFi connection issues fixed).

 

Prior to the problem my normal listening volume was in the mid 40s - now it is in the high teens to produce the same percieved volume.  My suspicion is that if we could have the rear speakers at say 45 and the soundbar at say 20 the front rearbalance would be correct - in other words the firmware change that dropped the overall volume on all channels should in fact only have dropped the soundbar volume and left the surround channels alone.

 

Interested to hear others thoughts on this...

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Robbienobs
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Hi Simon,

Great testing albeit some of what you said went straight over my head.

Mine was the same that when they rolled out the fix for the wifi connectivity it screwed the sound, but what it also did was change the way the volume displayed and it's increments which may be where the problems lay (also first sound issues where muffled over bassy sound with low rear volume)

I forget exactly how it changed now its been so long and have detailed this on the the very first few pages; it used to only show a plus and minus sign on tv with numbers on soundbar I think, and then this changed to showing numbers on tv.

It also went from 1 to 100, to 1 to 50 increments.......... Which I think from memory changes also between 50 and 100 wifi/hdmi and optical inputs still

I may be wrong as haven't been looking for this specifically lately and may habe changed.

I suppose my point is that maybe it's the update very shortly after the wifi fix that caused the issues, as I certainly only noticed the muffled sound since the way the volume is displayed/incremented changed.
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