Sony Bravia XR-55A90J Multi Channel Digital Audio Out

[ShortManBob]

I seem to be struggling to get multi channel digital audio output from my new Google TV. I've got the optical output connected up to my 10 year old Pioneer Amp, and although I can get stereo PCM coming through, there doesn't seem to be any settings in the menu to force multi channel output (Dolby Digital, etc).

The menu options that mention Dolby Digital are greyed out, and can only be activated when I choose the 'Audio System' option (as opposed to 'TV Speakers') on the 'Speakers' setting.

But every time I try and select 'Audio System', the TV switches back to 'TV Speakers' and complains about 'audio system communicate failure'.

Can I not force the TV into 'Audio System' mode somehow?

[royabrown2]

@ShortManBob 

Here’s a useful guide to Optical:-

https://www.the-home-cinema-guide.com/optical-digital-audio.html

I have had the same go-round as you with settings that only apply to the TV speakers.

I have actually solved my issues by using eARC to my soundbar, but I am guessing you don’t have HDMI in on the Pioneer? Or not ARC if you do? 

But if you have this, that would be the best way to go.

Otherwise, note from the article quoted that your choices with optical are PCM (TV decodes the audio and passes PCM, limited to stereo, to the sink device - the amp) or Bitstream (TV passes whatever audio it is getting down the optical link for the sink device to decode).

So you can’t choose Dolby Digital, even compressed, directly, and have to find where in your TV settings you can toggle optical out from PCM to Bitstream.

And I am afraid I don’t know where that setting is on your TV, but have a hunt round for Bitstream, sometimes called Audio Passthrough, and try that.

EDIT: Might seem obvious, but you can’t force a format that isn’t in the audio stream. Does the source material on the TV actually provide Dolby Digital?

[ShortManBob]

Thanks @royabrown2 

I think you are kind of confirming what I was already assuming - I want to select 'audio passthrough' (Bitstream I guess) option, but that is disabled when I can't select the 'Audio System' option. I had some similar issues with my previous Samsung TV, but was able to resolve that via the method you are suggesting.

You are correct, I don't have eArc - and I don't think that I can send the audio back down my HDMI connection to my Amp (it's connected on the Amp's HDMI output).

I'm not an expert, but I generally understand what is _supposed_ to be happening in my setup, it's just seems that the new Google TV OS on my new Bravia TV doesn't (yet?) allow me to do it.

Do Sony support read these forums?

[rooobb]

If your amp doesn't support hdmi why did you connect it? Probably it confuses the TV when you select audio system it try to send it t the hdmi. Disconnect the hdmi cable and leave only optical.btw is by design that if you don't select audio system it sends only pcm via optical.

[ShortManBob]

I have inputs to the Amp (Blu-ray mainly) that I output to the TV - that was the tradition reason for connecting an AV amp to your TV via HDMI  🙂

But you make a good point - I guess the TV is expecting the 'Audio System' to be an eArc one connected on my HDMI port.

I was assuming that the 'Speaker selection' option would apply to the optical audio output. I haven't seen any options for configuring the optical audio output to Bitstream rather than PCM, which I'm now thinking is what I need.

Sony Support - are you there?

[rooobb]

You can connect the Blu-ray player directly to the TV. You'll loose lossless audio but still get multichannel. Sony support doesn't answer here, you have t contact them

[royabrown2]

@ShortManBob 

There are a couple of people on here closely associated with Sony, but this is the weekend now 😢

Anyway, sometimes our answers are better; it was professionals who built the Titanic, but an amateur who built the Ark 😛

A well-behaved source should try to use ARC over HDMI, and on discovering that it doesn’t handshake, stop trying. But is your TV well-behaved?

Based on @rooobb‘s conjectures, try disconnecting the HDMI cable to the amp, and see if this fixes things.

If not, then based on my conjectures, either confirm that you know the audio you are trying to send from the TV is in fact compressed digital multichannel that optical can handle (i.e. not just stereo, nor Dolby Digital Plus, nor the DTS uncompressed equivalent) - Netflix, say - or try @rooobb‘s further suggestion of connecting your BluRay player to the TV, at least as a test, and ensure the disc you are playing is delivering compressed digital audio.

And see how you get on.