First milliseconds of audio get cut off?

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ergalthema

Active Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2017
Messages
63
I'm using a Sony UBP-X800 through an Onkyo TX-NR646.

The first milliseconds of audio get cut off. This is especially noticeable with music. If it gets silent in the middle of a track and then there is a quick attack, the attack will be cut off - even if it's in the middle of the track. But I mostly notice it at the beginning of every track. This happens with files from a thumb drive as well as Blu-ray discs. Pretty sure it happens on movie discs, but it's mainly at the first splash screens, menu, etc. Once a movie gets going, everything is fine.

It seems like it has happened with other source devices as well - so I'm thinking it's the receiver. Anyone else had a similar issue?
 
I'm using a Sony UBP-X800 through an Onkyo TX-NR646.

The first milliseconds of audio get cut off. This is especially noticeable with music. If it gets silent in the middle of a track and then there is a quick attack, the attack will be cut off - even if it's in the middle of the track. But I mostly notice it at the beginning of every track. This happens with files from a thumb drive as well as Blu-ray discs. Pretty sure it happens on movie discs, but it's mainly at the first splash screens, menu, etc. Once a movie gets going, everything is fine.

It seems like it has happened with other source devices as well - so I'm thinking it's the receiver. Anyone else had a similar issue?

Sounds like HDMI handshake issue...I used to have a plasma set and the old DVD-As had static menus, so to prevent burn-in I used to shut the TV off after picking a track. I remember the audio always used to cut out for a few seconds. Super annoying.

Since then I've gone full analog with my surround setup...old Marantz quadradial amp and SACD/DVD-A/Blu-Ray players hooked up with AV cables. It's a mess but there are rarely any playback issues.

Don't have that particular Sony unit (saw people grabbing them for $150 during black friday though), but I'm sure there are other members who do that may have the solution to the problem.
 
I have the same Sony player and I used to run it through an Onkyo NR545 receiver, which is basically the same receiver. I had no issues with the first few milliseconds being cut off. However I do have that issue in my car. I have had the problem for so long I no longer ever notice it.
 
Little late to the party, but- I get that from my BDP-80 playback, although I'm 99% positive it's my Onkyo Receiver.

Other symptons:
I use the ARC enabled HDMI out to my TV, and on cold startup nothing is displayed on the TV sometimes until I turn the receiver off, wait for the pass-through function to kick in (usually using sat receiver as content source), then switch the Onkyo back on and all is good again until next cold startup.
At almost the very end of warranty I sent the receiver in to have the HDMI board replaced. (apparently didn't last long!)

I've changed and swapped cables all around with spares but no love.

Although not specifically my Onkyo model shown, I'm planning on replacing the major capacitors on the board with some better ones pretty much as detailed here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GgDEtSug2o
 
The first milliseconds of audio get cut off.

Onkyo confirmed that this is a limitation of this AVR. There is no way to hear the first milliseconds of audio from a HDMI source. Very disappointing.

Also, I've been trying to find the best settings for Phono source. Stereo and Direct sound very different, especially regarding the soundstaging. And I can't find a setting that will use the subwoofer with Phono source - everything says it's outputting 2.0...
 
Onkyo confirmed that this is a limitation of this AVR. There is no way to hear the first milliseconds of audio from a HDMI source. Very disappointing.

Also, I've been trying to find the best settings for Phono source. Stereo and Direct sound very different, especially regarding the soundstaging. And I can't find a setting that will use the subwoofer with Phono source - everything says it's outputting 2.0...

I have an Integra receiver (Onkyo's suppsedly higher-end line), so I'm extrapolating a little here but if you're going by the receiver's front panel display it probably shows the specs of the source/input, not the output. Assuming you've got your subwoofer active in your speaker settings (which might mean choosing 'small' for your other speaker sizes-read the manual) it should be fed with low end regardless of whether or not there's a ".1" channel coming from the source. The only exception would be the direct setting because it abjures all processing/lf steering. That would explain the disparity between stereo and direct phono listening- in stereo your subwoofer is probably kicking in.

Similarly if you have a 5.1 setup in your receiver's speaker settings you'd see 7.1 appear when playing blu-rays so equipped, but the receiver would downmix it to 5.1, the number of channels that actually have speakers connected. At least that's how my receiver works.
 
Onkyo confirmed that this is a limitation of this AVR. There is no way to hear the first milliseconds of audio from a HDMI source. Very disappointing.

Also, I've been trying to find the best settings for Phono source. Stereo and Direct sound very different, especially regarding the soundstaging. And I can't find a setting that will use the subwoofer with Phono source - everything says it's outputting 2.0...

This problem is also indigenous to my Meridian 861 v.6 pre/pro when being fed by the OPPO BDP~105 utilizing the Shunyata Research HDMI venom cable. Simple solution....press reverse key [read: previous track] on OPPO and it instantly replays without the millisecond loss. No Big Deal. This 'problem' does not occur when outputting the analogue output of my Marantz SA11S3 SACD player into the same pre/pro.

Just something we have to live with, I guess. commonly referred to as a 'handshake' issue between HDMI/pre/pro!
 
This occurs with my Denon AVR 4311-CI, but only at the start of an album, or if I skip directly to a track (which also means, if playback is set to random). If it's continuous play, there is no loss. Quite annoying. I thought it was a foobar2k issue and have spent considerable time playing with foobar DSPs and buffer settings, but I noticed it recently using a BluRay hardware player too. HDMI connections all around. :(
 
I use Kodi for FLAC playback to my Emotiva Pre/pro via HDMI. Kodi offers several options for playback settings, one of which controls the outgoing bitrate. If I set Kodi to play using the "optimized" bitrate setting, it looks at the data stream and adjusts itself to the stream's native bitrate (up to some default maximum I think). This will cause the pre/pro to cut off the first fraction of a second or so every time the stream's bit rate changes. So going from 16/44 to 24/48 to 24/96 (or stopping the stream at any time) will all cause the pre-pro to re-adjust to the new data stream and the HDMI handshake just isn't fast enough to reproduce that first second of sound. What I do instead is set Kodi to output everything in a fixed format of 24/96 (there are higher and lower bitrates available as well). It then provides a constant stream of 24/96 to the pre/pro by transcoding everything to 24/96. This prevents the cut off problem with the pre/pro. Most time this would be an upsample to 24/96 from 16/44 or 24/48. I can't hear any audible difference when it upsamples, and I've listened critically to it to try and detect any. I also cant hear any degredation when it downsamples, which is a rarity.

When I play an optical disc from my Oppo through the pre/pro via HDMI, its hit or miss depending on the format. DTS and Blue Ray gets cut off, Redbook and DVD-A does not. Using the analog outs, the problem doesn't happen at all.

The first second cut off issue seems to be a common problem with nearly all ARVs and pre/pros.
 
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