No audio on certain channels via cable box

I have found at least 4 channels on my cable box that have no audio coming through. The problem has to be either with the cable box of the 990, I think.

I'm using Outlaw's optical cable to connect the cable box and the 990.

Anyone had a similar experience?

Thanks

Are those four channels, HD channels ?
Have you tried turning up the volume ?
some HD channels I get...have lower sound than regular channels for some weird reason...
I hope it's nothing more...

Are you certain that the channels in question have digital audio?

They are not HD channels - the only 2 that I remember are SpikeTV and Nickelodeon.

Not sure if they're digital - I just assumed everything was able to be output through the digital out.

If they're like mine, they're analog (station numbers below 100). I have had some digital cable boxes (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 2000 and 2100) that wouldn't convert the analog signal carried by most analog stations to a PCM bitstream for the box's digital output - that would produce what you are experiencing, but I'd expect it to affect a lot of stations (nearly all of the channels below 100). Most newer boxes (including the Pace boxes I've used) will provide an A/D conversion for those stations so you have a PCM digital signal from analog-only stations.

You might trade out your box for a new one to determine if there's a problem there - either an older box that doesn't do A/D or a fault with the box.

Thanks Gonk,
I think I'll swap the box out - hopefully that will do the trick.

Of the 4 channels with the problem, 2 or 3 are below 100 and the other 1 or 2 were low 100's. The rest of the sub-100 (analog) channels work fine.

Yeah, that makes me suspect either the box or a mix-up at your cable provider. If the box trade-out doesn't work, let the cable company know that something's messed up.

Just to update anyone who is interested, the problem was that my cable box's SAP setting was set to Spanish.

For the majority of channels, this made no difference. For a few of the HD movie channels, audio came out in Spanish and for a few channels, this resulted in no audio at all.

I decided to look into the spanish thing after watching 'Hitch' for 10 minutes in espanol. Once I found that SAP was set to spanish and then turned it off, the few channels which previously had no audio worked again.

Strange.

Ouch! That's a wild problem. It's good to hear that you got it figured out, though.