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I had a Bose soundbar (stereo) but all SD broadcasts exhibited poor audio in mid-range, especially female voice. It is worse with presenter in vision than out of vison, eg over a sequence of pictures. The effect is muffled. All settings were correct and cables have been changed. It has made me replace the Bose with a Cambridge soundbase (stereo only), but the issue remains. HDMI or Optical same. Humax says it is set to stereo, but could it have defaulted to multichannel without saying so?
Do I attempt re-setting the T2 to default? The Humax has been fine for about 9 years and this is a recent problem.
SD channels use lossy highly compressed mpeg 1 layer 2 audio.
You will get superior sound from the AAC audio found on HD channels. The box recodes this to dolby digital either 2.0 or 5.1 as transmitted. To get the superior sound you will have to change the audio out option to surround. With stereo selected the AAC audio is converted to the same format as used on the HD channels.
ITV-HD is always 2.0 stereo. So try using ITV-HD with output set to surround.
grahamlthompson – 4 hours ago »
To get the superior sound you will have to change the audio out option to surround.
I think on an HDR-FOX T2 the option is called “Multi-Channel” not “Surround”.
Thank you for your suggestions, but to be more specific my regional news is available in SD only so this is a daily annoyance. It is only in the last few months that this and other SD channels exhibit a midrange issue particularly speech. I accept that not always lapel mics are in the best position but documentaries for instance can also be poor without the use of lapel mics.
For more than 8 years my Fox T2 has been fine and set to stereo – multichannel/surround was not required and besides there was no output if selected. Now, under present conditions there is an output from multichannel/surround but it sounds identical to stereo.
I accept that SD is inferior to HD but remain at a loss as to why the significant difference has only been present for the last few months. Something has changed. I have tried other HDMI leads and optical cables plus 2 soundbars – with and without ARC.
Monty – 11 hours ago »
Thank you for your suggestions, but to be more specific my regional news is available in SD only so this is a daily annoyance. It is only in the last few months that this and other SD channels exhibit a midrange issue particularly speech. I accept that not always lapel mics are in the best position but documentaries for instance can also be poor without the use of lapel mics.
For more than 8 years my Fox T2 has been fine and set to stereo – multichannel/surround was not required and besides there was no output if selected. Now, under present conditions there is an output from multichannel/surround but it sounds identical to stereo.
I accept that SD is inferior to HD but remain at a loss as to why the significant difference has only been present for the last few months. Something has changed. I have tried other HDMI leads and optical cables plus 2 soundbars – with and without ARC.
Have you considered that the broadcaster may have reduced the audio bitrates to give a little more bandwidth to the video ? I cannot see any way it’s related to the box. You could try a external dac, but basically it’s garbage in garbage out. Does the sound seem OK using a SD channel on the TV ?
I managed to borrow another receiver today for comparison but the result is the same. The suggestion of further compression and reduced bitrate could be an explanation for the reduced SD performance.
Monty – 11 mins ago »
I managed to borrow another receiver today for comparison but the result is the same. The suggestion of further compression and reduced bitrate could be an explanation for the reduced SD performance.
Would seem to be the only logical explanation. A higher quality dac connected to the toslink output may help. Can only suggest you use the HD channels. After all the news is purely voice frequencies. Movies etc have a great deal more dynamic range.
Perhaps use a mobile device with headphones to listen to the news using the BBC sounds app.
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