Low volume in rear Speakers of HW-Q90R soundbar with non atmos content. Is there any solution?

[Estevez1979]

I' m an owner of a HW-Q90R

I read multiple posts (here and in other Audio forums) regarding the EARC issue in the HW-q90r. I understand that might be an issue for some, but with some workarounds  you can still have lossless audio connecting an external device such as a blue ray player or nvdia shield to the hdmi port of the bar. And still the difference Vs lossless and losy sound in this kind device is almost imperceptible.  But I'm really surprised that the low volume of rears is not as popular in the main discussion forums. 

Main issue for me is the lack of power of rears. Rears really make the most of the difference in price Vs the other bars of the range (hw-q80r), but the performance does not justify the cost. 

With good material (a 4k blu-ray movie with 7.1 atmos audio) the experience is absolutely jaw-dropping. Try for example Disney's "Frozen 2" 4k blu ray. And you will have an almost real cinema experience. With multiple effects coming from almost everywhere ,there is a scene with ice crystals falling from the sky where atmos really live comes alive. 

However, I'm very  dissapointed with non atmos content though. 

With non atmos the rears lack power , the sound it's really faint and you need to put your ear close to the speaker to really feel that they are actually working.  it is a fact that rear channels (Rb and Lb) are really  marginal in the majority of non high definition audio mixes. It is not used in all the 5.1 audio. Let alone in audio mixes with fewer than 6 channels.   But IMHO I  think that Samsung has not done a good joob in building a proper way to enable a sorround/full mode that diverts/replicate sound from the front/sorround channels to the rears. The "sorround mode" in theory should do the trick, but the reallity ,as I said, that even setting the volume of rears to +6 the sound is almost imperceptible. 

Fortunately I have lot of Atmos blu rays , and I can really enjoy the potential of this machine, however without Atmos content I would not recommend this bar at all, as the rears would be almost useless.  

I suspect that there is not hardware limitation , as the rears sound very powerful with the right content. But I'm not a sound engineering expert.  Then , my question/petition for Samsung would be , Is there any way to provide more power to the rears in non atmos content via a firmware update?

[FivePointOne]

I came here just to share my experience and solution.  Had a 5.1 system supporting only Dolby Digital and an LG TV that could support anything and output in DD. Could play Dolby sample movie files, perfect sound. AAC, perfect sound. But anything in Dolby Digital Plus (DD+), the rear speakers would give out only very faint sound.  LG TV was set to output as Dolby Digital, should have worked. But didn't.

I did a reset of the sound settings on the LG TV. Everything works fine now.

Turns out there was some setting enabled on the LG TV, some kind of surround scene or mode or 3D effect or some sort that would interfere. Now back speakers are loud and clear when they need to be used.

[Sebastienbo]

I had Samsung technical services on the phone and they confirmed that rear speakers(&subwoofer) will never play for normal stereo content . There is no music mode. However with smartthings you can use 2 music services pandora & something else don't remember. But spotify has been removed... for me I like to look television shows with music, and since they are not broadcasten in multichannel, the rear speakers don't work, so for me it was a downgrade from my previous bar. I sent my h90r back to the store, I'll go for the LG BAR 9.1

Samsung said they would work on this problem for future models, but not for  h90r