Got Surround Blues, help??

This seemed to be the best place to come to for advice and help with my lip sync problem before I appease the wife and sell my 990/7500 combo, referred to "as nothing but a problem since you bought it". I have always been a critical 2-channel listener, but decided to expand into the surround arena recently, hence the combo. I must state for the record that this system bests my old NAD equipment for 2-channel, it sounds great.

Now the nightmare; I have a continuous lip sync problem on cable and 4 out of every 5 movies. There is no rhyme or reason, sometimes the audio is ahead but MOST times the audio lags behind the video. I posted this awhile back in another forum but to no response. I really could use any insight you guys have to offer, because I am totally frustrated with this situation.

Here's an interesting side note, when I play any source with the 990 set to stereo there is no delay at all. Not what I bought the 990 for, to play everything in stereo.

My equipment aside from the Outlaw, is Pioneer DVD and Panasonic plasma. And I did use the auto set up of the 990.

Thanks in advance guys ------------

UMtiger

It sounds like you have the same issue with two sources, cable or DVD, both exhibiting lip synch delays. Did you try to use a different input option, ie switch to coax instead of optical?

I have not experienced lip synch delay on my dvd, also a Pioneer. but I have occasionally had my cable exhibit a lip synch delay and found that the HDMI power on sequence would sometimes throw the optical out of synch and by going into the cable box settings and toggling the audio outputs from digital to analog and back, the synch was immediately fixed. This is a random issue for me that is easily fixed. I recommend you also look at your power on sequence because the HDMI outputs of the cable box and the time the TV takes to acquire the signal could be your culprit, assuming your using HDMI.

UMtiger, this isn't help but a sharing of concern. I too have a Pioneer DVD and Panasonic plasma, plus a Scientific Atlanta cable box (you didn't say what yours is), and not yet having any surround gear I run everything in stereo. Never any lip sync problems with movies from the Pioneer and anly occasional, slight-to-mild sync delays on cable stuff. The audio seems to lag the video. Since it's unpredictable, mild at worst, and not on serious entertainment material (if that even makes sense), I've not tried to correct it. But when/if I ac

(Oops - hit wrong key)
-quire surround amp channels and speakers and then have your problems I'm going to be a VERY unhappy camper, so I hope you can get them sorted out.
What happens if you run stuff in various surround modes but with stereo-only connections? I think I'll try that myself when time permits, and report the results, especially if there's noticeable liplag.

thanks guys
I am not running HDMI, and the dvd is optical, I do not have it hooked coax so haven't tried that.

I am not sure what you mean running surround modes with a stereo hook up.

Remember my problem is mainly audio lags video, very rare but seems to be my problem, and yes I am a Very Unhappy camper.

alphanstein,

For the issue you outlined above "the time the TV takes to acquire the signal could be your culprit" What is the prefered sequence for power up?

I defaulted to leaving the cable box on all the time, then the 990 comes on followed by the TV which takes about 4-5 secs to power on and acquire the HDMI signal. This is all done via Macro on my Harmony 880 remote now.

My switch from coax to optical did not solve the occasional lip synch issue and hence me leaving the cable box on always. Getting to the stable settings I have now took a matter of months of trial and error, tweaking, tuning etc. But I actually like to dabble and then get it "perfect" for me, then sorta set it and forget it which is what it has been for the past 6 months plus.

I have a SA8300HD DVR, Philips 42" LCD, 990, 770 amp, and Pioneer DV79, SMS-1, all programmed with macros for the settings for various modes.

Interesting,
Much like you I have no issue with DVD..I have been experiencing lip sync issues with my direct TV satellite HR-20-700. May be showing a little ignorance here but it never occurred to me the power up sequence and or the TV not acquiring the DVI-HDMI at the same time as the optical audio, may be the issue. I also have a harmony 880. I am going to change the sequence and play with the delay settings and see what happens. Good place to start, thanks for the tip.

I also have an HR20 -700 DVR; I go directly from DVR to Sony KDS60A3000 by way of HDMI (bypassing 990 on the video path). I have very few problems with lip synch issues (OTA PBS occasionally, but that's a known issue with WGBH/Boston). Optical out from DVR to 990......Same setup for my Blu-Ray, also (bypass 990 on the video path).

i have the same lip sync problem every now and then with satellite TV and DVD's. what i do to fix the problem is run the auto speaker calibration and then save the settings.. works great.

for about a month or two.. then I have to rerun the auto speaker calibration again. it's only a small PITA though.

this fixes the problem each and every time for me.. sometimes I have to run the auto set up a couple times before it catches though.

Alphanstein
Never occurred to me either about the power up sequence. I currently do tv, 990, cable. But I will try this.
Could there be a setting issue within my dvd or tv that could be causing this also. Should i reset the delays back to zero from what auto setup provided.

Skyblazer, how you been. I guess you can see that I bought the 7500 instead of staying w/NAD. I have done the auto setup several times and it has not fixed it.

A good way to troubleshoot the delay is to also hook up the component and digital signals to your TV directly from the cable box, assuming your TV has the ability to have a digital optical or coax input. As this removes the 990 from the mix, you can determine if the cable box is causing a delay with the video to the TV first and foremost.

Absent the ability to hook up directly to the TV both digital sources, then you should trial and error the coax versus optical on the 990 and see if this helps fix.

I for one tried the auto set up of the 990, but opted to manually adjust the settings myself instead. This was just related to speaker levels and distances. I did not adjust for any lip synch delay to any of the inputs. While the auto setup was close, I had to tweak a few things slighly due to my room layout not being uniform.

As I said, my lip synch issues were intermittent and only on the cable box, so rather than adjust the 990 for delays, I tried to reduce the occurrence of the intermittence and so far have been fine of late.

I am surprised at the suggestion that digital signals sent via coaxial and optical digital connections from a source unit to a DAC (the 990's or anybody's) could result in differences in audio lag over any length of cable less than ten thousand miles or so. Has anyone actual evidence or experience that this is so?

Just provides one less source of signal conversion by going with cable vs optical. I think you may just want to try the recommendation on changing your speaker distance settings.

My suggestion was not related to cables causing the delay, but more so that the codecs on the transmit and receive end for the coax and optical are different silicon/hardware within the units, typically shared silicon on the same IC, but also a different functional block within the audio codecs if they are hardware implementations in silicon. Hence, they could present the issue for the synch with the digital video stream depending on their implementations in hardware. There could also be an implementation where they are software codecs that runs on a DSP which can still present a problem.

Lip sync issues are totally the fault of the broadcasters. The reason for the sync issue is that audio signals pass through the various DSP stages in the broadcast station faster than the video signals, since video is much more math-intensive to process than audio.

Unfortunately it is left up to the home user to set "compensating" delays for the audio in order to get things back into sync. This sucks, but it is just a fact of life.

You can try to call and complain to the originating station, but I wouldn't bet on much action.

Not meaning to detract from all the great sharing of communication, but I was hoping to get more "out of the box" suggestive ideas on how to address the audio lagging behind the video. This is mainly on DVD. Thanks again.

If by 4 of every 5 movies on DVD, then you should probably fix this by adjusting the lip synch delay for the assigned DVD input on the 990. That is, if the delay is consistently always the same delay. Which Pioneer DVD player do you have?

On the player, you can also try to change the settings for the output, ie dobly digital or PCM stream. You also want to make sure that if you have a DVD Audio/SACD DVD Pioneer, that you don't set the speaker distances and sizes here and also on the 990. I only use my 990 for speaker settings and the Pioneer settings are off/full range.

It is the DV 563-A. I have the delay for the dvd input set to 0 on the 990. Moving up the scale will only make the audio lag more. I will double check the output and get back.

alphanstein
settings within the dvd player:
speaker distance 10 ft
audio output 2 channel
digital, dolby,dts, all on
linear pcm off

I had a weird lip sync issue when I first set up my 990. As Altec stated generally lip sync issues happen due to the difference in processing time for audio vs. video and almost always it is the audio that is presented ahead of the video. However, in my case I was actually getting the audio behind the video, which meant the 990 could not adjust for it correctly. After digging around and speaking with Scott at Outlaw I discovered that it was due to a bad auto calibration. I know this sounds weird but when I went and looked at the the delay settings there would be a very strange value set for the sub's distance. Once I set that to an appropriate value the lip sync issues were resolved.

In reviewing the other posts I noticed that Skyblazer was also able to resolve lip sync issues with a recalibration. I suspect that he was having the same problem that I was having.

So just for grins, take a look at the delay settings for your speakers and see if the sub's distance is set to something that looks obviously wrong and if so correct the distance and see if that fixes the problem.

Thats a very interesting comment, for I got the same advice from Scot once also. However it did not fix it.

I do not have a sub, so there is no calibration done for one.

Just curous, the speaker distance settings in the dvd and the 990 are different. Would that cause a problem?

Don't know if this will help, but I let my 990 handle all speaker distances and crossovers (don't set them in the dvd player), and run all my video direct to the tv. It may just be luck, but I have no lip synch issues with either my hd-dvr or dvd player (auto or manual calibration).

In general, if one sets the delay in the DVD, and that delay happens to be more than needed, then the 990 will not be able to compensate, as it can only apply a delay, not an "advance".
As a rule of thumb, as rance suggets, don't apply the sync delay in two places.
Abandon all the adjustments made in the DVD player and do them all in the 990.
In general, my eperience with the 990 showed me that its auto calibration is not stellar. It got put on the wrong path by the wall refeactions, in my case.
In my experience, nothing beat a tape rule for distances and an SPL meter for levels.
Other than that, I find the 990 to be a superb piece of equipment.

Just my two cents...

It is really difficult to output a signal before it has arrived at the inputs...
Anyone who figures out a solution to that particular problem has several rather large fortunes awaiting them.

With tongue firmly in cheek.

All digital signals have some delay to the ultimate output, regardless of how they're processed, or not. This latency is taken advantage of for example in the current "brick wall limiters" used in the mastering of rock CDs. They analyze the digital signal as far ahead as they can (the period of latency) and therefore know what the audio signal is going to do before it is actually "heard". They then can intelligently apply processing based on the "future".

I was thinking more of real time digital control applications, where access to the feedback signal at time T-1 would make life vastly easier for the designer.

This is why I was asking, you do have a player that can adjust for speaker distances and you do not want to adjust them here and also in the 990. What your doing is causing the DVD player to delay the audio by setting it to 10ft and then the 990 also adds a delay based on it's auto calibration setting. In theory, the DVD's delay should only apply to its analog outputs, but it may be affecting your digital outputs also.

My recommendation, zero out all the speaker distance settings in your DVD and set all the speakers to large.

Measure the speaker distances from your listening position and then manually put these into your 990 settings only, with no lip synch delay to start. Then you should start from there to see if you have a lip synch delay on a source that you previously viewed and experienced such.

Auto calibrate gets thrown off in the lower frequencies so even with out a sub, if your speakers are full range and can produce lower level sub 60Hz tones, then it can affect your auto calibrate results from what I have experienced and also seen posted by others here.

I've been meaning to try to offer something useful to this thread this week, but my schedule has conspired against me...

UMtiger is using the digital output from his Pioneer, and as such would be getting an undecoded bitstream for Dolby Digital and DTS. That arrangement would bypass any delay settings in the player. Setting them all to zero can't hurt, but if the player is operating as it's supposed to it shouldn't be applying those delays anyway.