WD TV Live Plus digital audio problems?

I’ve started playing with Blu-Ray rips on the Plus and have an interesting problem with audio. I am experiencing audio dropouts throughout the movie while playing the m2ts. The dropouts are quick and sporadic, but still very annoying. Here’s the set-up:

- Audio setting = Stereo

- TOSlink cable running from a Panasonic 42" Plasma to a Yamaha receiver

- HDMI cable from Plus to TV

- Movie being played from a 1TB WD portable USB drive

I also tried connecting the digital out from the Plus directly to the receiver and had the exact same problem.

Any thoughts or recommendations?

Thanks.

Harlock


Let  me add a few other details to my original post…

I’m trying to play a full rip of a Blu-Ray (44 GB), so the m2ts has not be remuxed into a single file. I tried launching the movie from the original directory structure and from an ISO I built. Both had audio dropouts when played.

As a test, I tried playing another BD remuxed as a single file and I had no issues with sound.

Harlock

Well, it’s most likely NOT an audio dropout per se but the result of mixing down a 5.1 surround sound to stereo (choosing the “Stereo” as the output).

With 5.1 surround (and nearly ALL blu-rays have at least this) the center channel is for the dialog, and the left and right and back surround carry music and effects.  But choosing “Stereo” means it’s all mushed together, with the result that sometimes dialog will appear to drop out as it gets overwhelmed by the other channels.

In any case, it’s not really what you want to do – unless you want to remux the file (into a stereo format) playing an M2TS file with the Live is really designed for surround.  What you want is to set the Live to “digital” and then have your receiver decode the surround channels.  Try it that way and see if the “dropouts” don’t disappear.

Ooooo, just got a look on how you are connected – that’s REALLY wonky.

You want the sound to go from the Live to your Yamaha.  So you should be using the Optical cable from the Live to the Yamaha, and then the HDMI from the Live to your TV (that’s just one way, of course.  If your Yamaha has HDMI outputs then ideally you just want to put the HDMI from the Live to your Yamaha and the HDMI from the Yamaha to the TV and forget the optical entirely).  In any case, you still want “digital” as your output type.

Mike,

Thanks for taking the time to help solve my problem.

I reconnected the digital output from the WD directly to the Yamaha and reset the Audio config to Digital.

I’m still having issues:

 - When I set the receiver channel input (in this case D-TV) to Auto and configure it for Dolby Surround Sound, there are still “drop-outs”. The display of the receiver changes modes to Pro Logic when the drops occur and they only last a brief second. The Dolby Digital mode is still active when Pro Logic blinks on the screen.

It must be something incorrectly set-up with the receiver, but I can’t figure out what it is.

Also, on a side note, I noticed that my HDMI output setting (1080i, 60Hz) is being changed back to Auto periodically all be itself. I have to change it back manually. Have you seen this behavior?

Also, one last question for you. Does the Live Plus upconvert ISO DVDs to the configured HDMI output? The DVDs I’ve watched look almost as good as some of the Blu-Ray content on my 42" Panasonic.

Thanks again for all your help.

Harlock

Drop outs of the sort you describe now (where the receiver changes decoding mode) actually sound like a file problem.  How did you rip the blu-rays?  (What software and to what container and audio/video codec).  And how are you playing them?  (Via a locally attached hard drive, or through the network and if through the network, wired or wireless?).

The WD does sometimes lose it’s HDMI settings – try a reset of the unit (plug and unplug it from the power as well) to see if you can get it to hold.

Because the output of the WD Live is set there, any file played is, of course, up converted to that format.  So if your resolution output is set to 1080p for example, even if the source is not that it has to be upconverted to display (this is actually true of any such output device).