Details of Android TV Sound settings for Sony KD65-A1

[penguin69]

Hi,

I have a Sony KD65-A1 and have a couple of questions.

1) The reference manual for the TV does not provide any guidance on the Android TV settings. Is there an online reference for these? I need to make some changes to Audio settings and at the moment I am guessing a little bit on some of the less intuitive settings. I've done some searching around the Sony site and elsewhere, but I haven't found anything that I would class as a reference guide. I thought Sony would cover it in their manual, but I guess they were worried that future Android version upgrades would make their documentation redundant.

2) What I am essentially trying to do is to stop my Sony TV from recognising my JBL Soundbar as a sound device. I want the TV to accept video content from the Soundbar (pass through from AppleTV) but let me decide how to govern the audio. There are a few reasons for this, the main one being that when the Soundbar is detected by the TV as an audio device, I seem to lose the ability to take (L)PCM audio and analogue audio from the optical and headphone outputs respectively. If anyone has a tips or idea here, I am all ears. Any and all suggestions welcome!

Regards

penguin69

[royabrown2]

@penguin69 

1. https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/oled-tvs-android-a1-series/kd-55a1/manuals

Web Guide.

2. Plug the soundbar into one of the non-ARC HDMI inputs, instead of the ARC one.

[penguin69]

Hey 

Many thanks for the reply and hunting out the link, I really appreciate it.

I did find that manuals page previously, sadly both the Reference Guide and Startup Guide .pdf manuals are the same as the paper manuals supplied with the TV - and these don't explain the sound settings, or any aspect of the Android interface for that matter. (I've decided to document these myself now, with a bit of trial and error, and some trawling of forum answers.)

Thanks also for the ARC HDMI tip, it's an excellent idea. I did actually try that a few days ago (using HDMI 1 input), I expected it to work but for some reason the TV continued to recognise the soundbar as an audio device and automatically divested sound duties to it. But it's definitely an avenue to revisit. The TV has HDMI 3 marked as the ARC-enabled input/output, but I also found documentation stating that both HDMI 2 and HDMI 3 are ARC-enabled. Confusing. 

I will keep beavering away, and report back if/when I find a workable solution.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

Regards,

penguin69

[royabrown2]

@penguin69 

Yes, I was pointing you to the Web Guide, the first item listed. The printed manuals that come with these TVs are a disgrace.

With the ARC, try using a cheap HDMI splitter off Amazon. Not to split anything, but I have never found one yet that will pass ARC, and you can exploit this to defeat the ARC if all your HDMI ports, annoyingly, have it.

If the splitter passes ARC after all, send it back and get a worse one 😛

[penguin69]

Thanks again.

I actually did use the HDMI splitter trick last week (handily, I had a cheap 5v one in a box upstairs), principally in an attempt to get the TV to recognise the soundbar as something other than an audio device, i.e. just as an HDMI visual input source and nothing else. But, for some unknown reason, the pass-through wouldn't work at all - no sound or picture. I ordered another dedicated splitter a day after that test - the previous splitter was an audio one with HDMI pass-through so I thought that it might be too basic - but the second dedicated unit also did not give me a picture.

After a bit of fiddling yesterday, I did make some progress with my problem. The AV setup, for reference, is cabled this way:

  1) AppleTV (HDMI) -> JBL Soundbar (HDMI) -> Sony TV HDMI 1 input (non ARC)

The JBL-recommended alternative to the above is as follows:

  2) AppleTV (HDMI) -> Sony TV (HDMI) -> JBL Soundbar (received via TV HDMI Arc output)

But ... using #2 would defeat the objective of having the soundbar, as any Atmos signal will be down-mixed. And the reason I bought the Soundbar was solely for its Atmos capability.

The good news from my further fiddling is that I have discovered that the TV's act of recognising the JBL soundbar as an Audio Device is NOT causing the problem I have. I can prove this by turning the soundbar on, seeing the TV recognise it and delegate audio duties to it, but letting me (watch and) listen nevertheless to the TV's Youtube app via the Toslink digital out. So the TV is still producing a PCM signal even when the soundbar is connected and switched on. This is a step forward in my learning.

The problem is that the PCM signal is lost when I switch the TV mode from Youtube app to the HDMI 1 input. The optical cable still produces light (I've checked), but my DAC can no longer decode any signal there might be. I have noticed that there is a sound setting for the digital output which allows me to choose between a couple of compressed modes and PCM ... I have set this to 'PCM' but it doesn't make any difference, a signal is not detected by the DAC.

A theory I have is that the TV's optical output may switch to emitting a multi-channel audio signal after I select HDMI1 (i.e. to watch AppleTV), but I have no immediate way of proving that. I suppose I could try to find out by rewiring as follows:

  3) AppleTV -> Sony TV -> JBL Soundbar (received via TV optical output)

This, however, would not be absolute proof positive, as the re-cabling will be changing the configuration. But it would be a start, and I think my next avenue might be to find a gizmo that can downmix a multi-channel optical signal to two channel.

Thanks again for the help and suggestions, they are all getting me thinking and helping me progress.

Regards,

penguin69

[HannahEd01]

I think this article will help you: https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/televisions-projectors-oled-tvs-android-/kd-65a1/articles.... And this one too: https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/televisions-projectors-oled-tvs-android-/kd-65a1/articles.... If you connect the soundbar to the HDMI ARC, and the Apple box to any other HDMI that should pass the picture from the box to the TV and the sound through the soundbar. Make sure to choose enhanced format too.

[royabrown2]

Hi @HannahEd01 

Are you a bot?

[penguin69]

Thanks HannahEd01, 

These are useful links but they will not solve the problem of decoding the digital out signal I have. The AppleTV, Soundbar and TV are working to spec I think, it's just that I don't have a DAC to decode what I presume to be a multi-channel digital out signal.

FWIW, I've pretty much decided that I will admit defeat and return the JBL Soundbar. The sub wasn't connecting via wifi anyway, and the detachable speakers were a bit patchy at times with reception; I'd rather not live with beta hardware. I will have one more stab tomorrow.

I'm probably going to replace the JBL soundbar with an Atmos-enabled AV receiver with pre-outs - there are a couple of relatively cheap ones from Sony and Yamaha that should do the job. I will run the pre-outs either directly into my integrated amp or, if I want to make life hard for myself again (lol), I will run the pre-outs into an ADC and thence into my DAC. That sounds like madness, but I have a very nice upscaling Chord DAC which cleans up almost any signal, no matter how rudimentary. (I will trial and error whichever mode sounds best.)

Thanks for all the suggestions Roy, really appreciate you taking the time to help.

penguin69

[royabrown2]

@penguin69 @HannahEd01 

I think Hannah is a bot. She/it was posting at almost supernatural speed last night, and it looks like she’s been trained on the entire catalogue of Sony online help, is trawling for keywords in postings here, and providing links into the online help that deals with the keyword items. And wrapping the links round with some stunningly good English.

As an approach, it’s highly effective, and useful too. She didn’t quite get her response to you right, suggesting you plug the Apple TV into the Sony, when we had already concurred that this would lose the True Atmos that the Apple TV can do, and plugging the Apple TV into the soundbar was the better approach; but I’ve seen humans miss the mark worse than that, and indeed, probably done it myself 😛; but whoever has set her up, well done. Or if you are a human, @HannahEd01, well done anyway.

The trouble with the Turing test is that a lot of humans wouldn’t pass it 😛

Going back to your issue @penguin69, albeit perhaps for the last time, I think you should try to ensure you are just putting stereo into HDMI1, from whatever source, so we are not trying to figure out if the TV isn’t being passed any sound, or if the silence is due to it being passed sound it can’t handle.

And have a look at the end of the optical cable when the TV is really doing nothing - I suspect there will still be ‘traffic’ on it.

I had a play at imitating something like you are doing, albeit on our Samsung 2015 UE55JS9000 TV with our Yamaha YSP-2500 Soundbar on its ARC port, and found the following:-

(1) Got Google to turn on the Roku Stick plugged into the soundbar. This turned on the TV and showed the picture, but with no audio. The soundbar stayed in standby.

(2) Turned on the soundbar. Got audio from it OK.

(3) Switched the TV to its own speakers. Video unaffected, got audio on the TV from the programme playing on the Roku through the soundbar, which now fell silent.

(4) Realised I need to clarify what was happening at (1), so put the soundbar in standby with the Roku programme still playing, went to the speaker settings on the TV. These showed the TV speakers were in use, albeit that there was video but no audio.

(5) Switched the TV Audio setting to use the soundbar. This took the soundbar out of standby, and the audio now played from the soundbar.

So with the soundbar on, and the TV switched to use its own speakers, there was audio coming up the cable along with the video. Makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is that the soundbar in standby was passing the video from the Roku to the TV, but not passing the audio.

I would have expected that turning on the Roku with the soundbar in standby would:-

EITHER turn on the soundbar;

OR not send any video or audio;

OR send video and audio.

and NOT to leave the soundbar off AND send video BUT not send audio.

Of course, these are neither your TV nor your soundbar, which might well behave quite differently. But it shows things can get a bit convoluted.

I don’t know what counts as cheap for an AV receiver; I’ll be looking at the Denon X2700H, which is bang up to date, and has 7.1, where the extra 2 channels can be one of a multitude of things, including Atmos. But this has just a couple of pre-outs besides, to feed a stereo amp in Zone 2, which is likely not what you want here.

[penguin69]

Thanks again Roy,

And special thanks for trying to replicate my problem!

If Hannah is a 'bot, then she is a very good quality one. I had a nose around and saw some of her other replies, they seem pretty personalised at times. Impressive - hints of Blade Runner, lol.

>> I think you should try to ensure you are just putting stereo into HDMI1, from whatever source,

>> so we are not trying to figure out if the TV isn’t being passed any sound,

>> or if the silence is due to it being passed sound it can’t handle

Another great idea. I actually didn't perform this test earlier because I thought I knew the answer, as I use a Raspberry Pi running Moode Audio as the primary source for my stereo system. But I've just remembered that my Chord DAC is fed by the optical card from the Pi rather than via the TV's optical out. Duh, I should have checked. My tests in recent days actually have been very minimal, as I put my back out whilst fiddling and I have had my other half on cable duties since then, and all good will/credit on that side ran out after about the fifth reconfiguration!

Your tests with your soundbar + TV are very interesting. My combo behaves a little differently. The TV seems at times to decide when the Audio Device (soundbar) is 'owning' the sound or not, and it will be very clear from the TV remote volume, as it starts incrementing by a factor of 3 (e.g. 6->9->12) rather than normally. But if the soundbar is in standby, then no sound is emitted from any source when I am incrementing the volume.

What I wish I had (but no doubt is very expensive) is some kind of testing device to check whether the optical out is emitting 1s and 0s. I can see that it emits light permanently, but I have no way of detecting if there is actually traffic.

Anyway, it is all quite immaterial at this stage as I have packed up the soundbar to be returned. There were other issues with it, including the wireless speakers not always connecting, and sometimes crackling, and the sub never connecting either. Also, the sound controls for the soundbar itself are very rudimentary. 

I've just ordered a Yamaha RXV6A AV receiver to replace it. They retail for around £650. My original idea was to get a Yamaha as they have pre-outs as well as wireless Musiccast surround, but I was (incorrectly) told by my local hifi shop that the Yamaha RX-A1080 was the only receiver that could meet my needs, and they are on back-order everywhere.

With this new set-up, I can also try out Yamaha Virtual Cinema Front, which is essentially a surround sound option but with all the speakers in and around the TV. I've read a few reviews of this over the last 24 hours, obviously it's not the same as having a normal surround set-up but it's supposedly a decent interim between that and standard 2 channel audio. It would perhaps suit my home environment a little better, and if it transpires that it doesn't work well then I can buy a set of Yamaha wireless surround speakers. I could actually do that straight up, but they seem horrendously expensive ... so I will see first how I get on with the Cinema Front surround with pre-outs into my 2 channel stereo.

So, in sum, I am going to be more conservative this time round. The JBL soundbar was something of an impulse buy because it has wireless speakers and it was immediately available. I also like JBL ... my first student speakers were JBL Control 1's, bought back in the late 80's. Great pieces of kit for student digs.

Anyway Roy, many thanks again for the advice and also for going the extra mile to test things out in your own home. If I could have given you more than a single Kudo each time I would! (Question: at what point does the Sony forum convert these kudos into hard cash?)

Cheers

penguin69