TX-NR509 audio delay / silence with Tivo

Hello, I have an issue with audio being delayed when watching video from my Tivo HD via HDMI. Specifically when whenever we skip forward or back there is about a 2 second delay before the audio starts again. The video does what its supposed to but the audio is silent for a couple of seconds. Pretty annoying when watching football or just trying to skip around programs.

I know its not the Tivo as it doesn't do this when hooked straight to the TV or my old receiver.

Can you tell me if there is something I can do to stop this from happening?

Thanks!

Hi kahuna,
I am going to ask you to run through our HDMI checklist. It can be found on our blog: http://onkyousacustomersupportblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/the-hdmi-checklist/ Number 3 on this list is a factory reset, if you get to this step please read our blog post on the subject first, it gives you all the information you need to know about the reset: http://onkyousacustomersupportblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/factory-reset/ Thank you for contacting Product Support via our forum.

I have the same problem with my TX-SR309 connect via HDMI to my Tivo Series 3 DVR. When I skip or go back the picture returns but there is no sound for 2 to 3 seconds. As stated above this is not caused by the Tivo as it doesn't happen when connected directly to the TV. I found the answer by Onkyo as completly unacceptable. The HDMI trouble shooting steps are meaningless. Have Onkyo engineer tested this in the lab? Is this a problem with 5.1 encoding or is it a design issue with Onkyo receivers. I would appreciate a real answer to this question. There are millions of Tivo out there Onkyo should be able to give a real anser to this question.

Hello Dloskot and Kahuna,

I have a question for the both of due to you have the same issue of a delay in audio. Are you experiencing the audio delay with other sources besides the TiVo(for an example a dvdplayer)? Also what is the information that shows up on the front panel of the receiver, no signal or does it come up with the Dolby Digital?

Since I talked to Support twice and could not get any real help and my neighbor has the same set up but a Denon receiver and his doesn't have this issue I returned the Onkyo receiver and order a Denon. For your information when I change the audio on my Tivo to be digital Doby to PCM then the delay went away but then the sound wasn't as good. According to the Denon engineer he believes this is a HDMI handshake issue and the Onkyo receiver is taking a couple of second to do the handshake then process the sound. Apparently the Denon has better handshaking and processing.

Hi dloskot,

I'm sorry we weren't able to resolve this for you.

I did the HDMI reset with no change.

All the audio info goes away when this happens. Like dloskot mentioned if I change to PCM on the Tivo then there is no delay, but that isn't 5.1.

I hooked back into my old receiver and the delay does not happen.

Thanks for any thoughts on this.

I'll put in my 2cents. From what I've noticed when there is no audio being sent to the receiver it will switch internally to "listen" for PCM audio by default, causing a delay to switch back to dolby digital decoding. I'm guessing that other receivers do not have this function of defaulting back to PCM which is why they work fine; they don't have the delay of switching to PCM then back to dolby digital decoding during the skip forward/backward causing a dropped audio signal. Now here's the thing, both Onkyo and TiVo are at fault for potentially bad programming. I have a non TiVo DVR and it keeps the audio signal transmitted even when there is no actual audio to be sent, so the dolby digital signal does not drop. TiVo could fix this on their own box with a firmware update I'm sure, and Onkyo could make the audio input not switch to PCM when there's no signal as well. Looking at it objectively it seems to just be a basic incompatibility.

The older models have a similar issue where if you had a PC outputting 7.1 or 2.0 over HDMI the audio would be delayed going from silence to an error beep or silence to music playing because if there was no audio being received then the receiver would turn off the input, there was nothing you could do about it and this seems to be a similar problem. It's too bad the TiVo (based on your description) doesn't allow 5.1 PCM because that would solve your problem for the most part.

Ok i found something that might help you, though this is on my 609 so no idea if it will work on the 509. Set your receiver to the TiVo's input, enter the setup menu, go to Source Setup >> Audio Selector, make sure it's set to HDMI on the first line, then turn "Fixed Mode" to On and see if that solves the problem. It's only a hunch but it's possible it could work.

Unfortunately I get no audio when I do that.

Thanks though, good idea

Only other thing I could suggest is going into setup, listening mode preset, the input for you tivo, go to "dolby d/dolby d plus/dolby true hd" and set it to straight decode, exit out of setup, change input, turn off the receiver, turn it back on, and set it to the tivo input. If this works how I think it will, once it get the DD 5.1 signal it will stay on that even if it drops during the jumping forward/back.

I'll give it a try, but I don't see anything about listening mode preset in the setup menu's. Can you point me in the right direction?

Thanks

On mine it's number 5:



This is what i get when i press the setup button.

Edit: the adjustment is per source so it might be in a menu that's related to your source settings on your receiver, if it has it.

I have a 609 and after reading many threads with no solution I found one. Go from Tivo HD to Onkyo via HDMI for video and then use optical from Tivo to Onkyo for audio. Make sure to setup your source to use the Optical instead of HDMI for audio and now audio silence is a thing of the past.

Hi forum users,

In order to assist you further I would need to know what the make and model numbers of your Tivo boxes? I will research this and hopefully will have an answer for you as soon as I have the makes and model numbers.

OnkyoUSA wrote:Hi forum users,

In order to assist you further I would need to know what the make and model numbers of your Tivo boxes? I will research this and hopefully will have an answer for you as soon as I have the makes and model numbers.

It's a Tivo HD. Sorry I don't know the part number.

Hi kahuna,

I'm curious if you have contacted Tivo on this matter as in my tests and research all works normally? As for the 1 to 2 second delay it is normal as the unit has to go through the handshake and this may cause it.

Sorry No I haven't. Since this problem doesn't occur with other receivers, it didn't seem like a Tivo problem.

Thanks

Hi kahuna,
We will of course continue to look into this for you, but if you could contact Tivo as a matter of research that would be very helpful. Thank you.