Help! Why is my right rear channel very quiet with Japanese 7" Mini LPs SACD Quad discs?

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Druid

Active Member
Joined
Jul 30, 2022
Messages
61
Location
UK
Hi all

I am a complete noob when it comes to the world of multichannel music so please go easy on me!!!:)

I'm hoping you guys can help me with an issue that exclusively occurs during multichannel playback of certain SACD titles.

I have a Sony UBP-800XM2 universal player hooked up to a Samsung Q950a Atmos soundbar and I have approx. 100 multichannel discs consisting of DVDA, SACD and Blu Ray Audio titles.

I appreciate that my system really isn't the best, but some of these multichannel discs sound pretty damn good on this meagre set up. Multichannel playback of stuff like The Nightfly, XTC, DSOTM, Gentle Giant, Beatles Love, Yes, Roxy's Avalon, lots of D-V SACDS etc. sound 'effing amazing to my ears which makes me wonder how good these discs would really sound on a good system.

My problem is with playback of all my Japanese 'mini 7" LP' quadraphonic Hybrid SACDs. The right rear channel is soooo quiet which is really spoiling my enjoyment of the Santana, Abraxas, Santana III, Miles Davis Bitches Brew and Herbie's Headhunters discs. I can hear some sound from the right rear but it is barely noticeable until my ear is almost against the grille. It sounds to me that the sound emanating from the right rear is the whole recording in that I think I can hear all instruments and vocals - could this be my player incorrectly sending a low volume 'quiet' centre channel signal to the right rear speaker (I think I read that some 4.0 recordings use a very low volume rather than silent centre channel signal when converted to a 5.0 or 5.1 SACD)?

I have also read on this forum of a theory that some disc players may have a glitch in that they can incorrectly assign channels depending on how an SACD disc is authored. Something about 4.0 quad recordings being authored for 5.0 (silent centre (or very quiet) and no sub signal) or 5.1 (silent centre AND sub) and that some disc players incorrectly swap rear channels depending on whether they are playing 5.0 or 5.1 discs. Could the right rear channel have been swapped with a (near silent) centre channel signal?

This occurs on all of those Japanese discs I mentioned and I'm sure the discs are fine and that it's my system at fault. I also have the mini 7" LP SACD of Toto IV - but that seems fine. Different type of recording?

I have played many other quad recordings on SACD including 20 or so Dutton-Vocalion discs but they seem fine. All the DVDA and Blu Ray titles I have play just fine too.

My Sony player has the latest firmware installed so can anyone shed any light on what could be happening and if there's anyway of fixing the issue which admittedly seems unlikely given I can't swap speaker cables around with a soundbar.
 
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I just checked and the Santana Abraxas is 5.0 so no LFE, I don't have the Toto yet so it might be 5.1 or 5.0. My gut feeling is that it is something to do with the Soundbar rather than the Sony (I have an Oppo and the Right rear is at the same level as the others). Is there a way to disable Atmos functionality on the soundbar? Maybe it is trying to spread the 5.0 channels around as an Atmos up-mix?
 
Thanks Duncan. I will give that a try and have a look at the soundbar - it could probably do with a firmware update too.
Do you happen to know if Dutton-Vocalion quad discs are 5.0 or 5.1? They all seem to play fine (I have played about 20 titles thus far).
 
Im gonna assume its ur soundbar n settings issue. Most soundbars cannot transfer dsd signals. Make sure all ur settings are set to PCM Not dsd
Good luck
 
Do you happen to know if Dutton-Vocalion quad discs are 5.0 or 5.1?
The D-V SACDs are all authored in 5.1, with silent center and sub channels. The Jeff Beck Sony Japan quad discs were 5.1 as well (with low-level derived content in the center & sub channels), but starting with Miles' Bitches Brew they seem to have switched over to 5.0 with an empty center. I'd bet that's what's causing your problem. When the guitar swirls around at the beginning of "Black Magic Woman", does it completely skip the right rear channel?
 
The D-V SACDs are all authored in 5.1, with silent center and sub channels. The Jeff Beck Sony Japan quad discs were 5.1 as well (with low-level derived content in the center & sub channels), but starting with Miles' Bitches Brew they seem to have switched over to 5.0 with an empty center. I'd bet that's what's causing your problem. When the guitar swirls around at the beginning of "Black Magic Woman", does it completely skip the right rear channel?
Thanks for the info, it seems like it's 5.0 SACDs causing problems. On Black Magic Woman there is no output at all on the right rear channel - except for low level sound which seems to be a combo of all channels just very quiet.
TOTO IV seems to be fine though - could that one be 5.1 as it would make sense if it is?
 
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Im gonna assume its ur soundbar n settings issue. Most soundbars cannot transfer dsd signals. Make sure all ur settings are set to PCM Not dsd
Good luck
Thanks wannabee - will take a look at the settings on the player and 'bar
 
TOTO IV seems to be fine though - could that one be 5.1 as it would make sense if it is?
Not all the Sony Japan discs are '70s quad, a few are reissues of 5.1 mixes from the early-2000s (Billy Joel's The Stranger & 52nd Street, Carole King's Tapestry, etc). Toto IV is one of those, so you should definitely be hearing content in the center & sub channels.

PS - for a "total noob" you've got some great titles! Avalon is hard to come by these days.
 
Thanks Duncan. I will give that a try and have a look at the soundbar - it could probably do with a firmware update too.
Do you happen to know if Dutton-Vocalion quad discs are 5.0 or 5.1? They all seem to play fine (I have played about 20 titles thus far).
A firmware update is definately worth a try, a google search shows lots of rear speaker issues with this model, although normally it’s both rear speakers not working, rather than one. (Bizarrely, a fix for this particular issue was to turn off Bass Enhancement via the Samsung App….). Good luck!
 
Im gonna assume its ur soundbar n settings issue. Most soundbars cannot transfer dsd signals. Make sure all ur settings are set to PCM Not dsd
Good luck
Thanks Wannabee. Had a bit of a play with settings and will report findings below
 
Ok, so Soundbar was already on latest firmware.

Tried turning Bass Enhancement on and off in the app several times to no avail.

Next tried adjusting the settings on the 800XM2 menus as follows:

In the Audio Settings:

Digital Output set to PCM
DSD Output Mode to OFF
BD Secondary Audio to OFF
DTS NEO:6 to OFF
46/96/192 KHZ Set to 192KHZ
DSEE HX to OFF
Audio DRC to OFF
Downmix to SURROUND

In the Music Settings:

Super Audio CD Play Back set to SACD
Super Audio Play Back Channels set to DSD Multi

Still the rear right channel seems very quiet during play back of Abraxas. I haven't had a chance to replay any other of those Japanese mini LP discs but it seems that the problem persists :mad:

Sub woofer is on.

One thing to note is that despite DSD Output being set to off, during play back the display states DSD Multi 2.8MHz/1bit - I'm no expert but I would have expected it to state PCM.
 
Not all the Sony Japan discs are '70s quad, a few are reissues of 5.1 mixes from the early-2000s (Billy Joel's The Stranger & 52nd Street, Carole King's Tapestry, etc). Toto IV is one of those, so you should definitely be hearing content in the center & sub channels.

PS - for a "total noob" you've got some great titles! Avalon is hard to come by these days.
Avalon - is such a treat! I hope to add Bryan Ferry's Boys and Girls to my collection very soon - I have a lead on that score!
 
Not sure if this helps, but I have the same Sony Blu-Ray player and I was having trouble getting the Atmos discs to play correctly - there was nothing coming from the Atmos speakers. I solved it by changing the Sony output from PCM to Auto.
 
Not sure if this helps, but I have the same Sony Blu-Ray player and I was having trouble getting the Atmos discs to play correctly - there was nothing coming from the Atmos speakers. I solved it by changing the Sony output from PCM to Auto.
Thanks for the suggestion - I'll give that a try 👍
 
I know this is a dead thread, but I just wanted to add that I have a Samsung Q930C soundbar system that includes a subwoofer and 2 rear speakers. It also doesn't properly play Quadraphonic SACDs that are encoded as 5.0 SACD with a silent front centre channel. (It's not clear to me why a Quad SACD would be encoded this way rather than just as 4.0 channels.)

I have two SACDs like this, Bitches Brew and Head Hunters. The soundbar takes the silent front centre channel and sends it to the back right speaker, so there's no sound from that speaker even though the speaker is on. I am in the process of trying to see if Samsung will update the soundbar firmware to fix this issue, or perhaps add a feature to be able to move channels to their SmartThings app, but of course customer service has no idea what I am going on about and so I just keep receiving email replies telling me to 1) update the soundbar firmware 2) reinitialise/reset the soundbar or 3) take the soundbar to my local Samsung service centre so they can identify the hardware fault.

My current solution is to rip the SACD and then convert the files from 5.0 to 5.1. Once this is done I can play back the audio as multi channel FLAC using my blu-ray player. Once the files are 5.1, the soundbar understands the correct channel layout and I can play the audio properly. I was just lucky enough to have a Blu-ray/SACD player that can rip SACDs.
 
I know this is a dead thread, but I just wanted to add that I have a Samsung Q930C soundbar system that includes a subwoofer and 2 rear speakers. It also doesn't properly play Quadraphonic SACDs that are encoded as 5.0 SACD with a silent front centre channel. (It's not clear to me why a Quad SACD would be encoded this way rather than just as 4.0 channels.)

I have two SACDs like this, Bitches Brew and Head Hunters. The soundbar takes the silent front centre channel and sends it to the back right speaker, so there's no sound from that speaker even though the speaker is on. I am in the process of trying to see if Samsung will update the soundbar firmware to fix this issue, or perhaps add a feature to be able to move channels to their SmartThings app, but of course customer service has no idea what I am going on about and so I just keep receiving email replies telling me to 1) update the soundbar firmware 2) reinitialise/reset the soundbar or 3) take the soundbar to my local Samsung service centre so they can identify the hardware fault.

My current solution is to rip the SACD and then convert the files from 5.0 to 5.1. Once this is done I can play back the audio as multi channel FLAC using my blu-ray player. Once the files are 5.1, the soundbar understands the correct channel layout and I can play the audio properly. I was just lucky enough to have a Blu-ray/SACD player that can rip SACDs.
A lot of AVRs will not play Quad correctly usually just playing the front channels, adding the silent Centre channel cures that, probably because the channel order/id is recognised, the use of an LFE as far as I know is not mandatory. Yours appears to be another case, where having no LFE causes your soundbar to get confused and mess up the channel allocation.

Is your player converting the DSD to PCM? I suspect it is, as a few people have had issues with soundbars not playing DSD.
 
One possibiliity is the system is misinterpreting the 'Ls and Rs' channels. (I forget what the channel layout abbreviations are for the Sony 'quad' discs, but there are two possible ways to designate rear speakers. Music Media Helper recently added an option to change the designators)


Hard to know for sure why it's working as it does, really; the settings in your SACD player may also be involved. (I assume you are using its HDMI directly out to the soundbar? Not, yikes, going through a TV first? Details about your devices and connections would help.)
 
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