I just bought a Magnifi sound bar. Some speech is barely audible. How do I fix it?

danwillis

I mostly watch football on TV. The sound is perfectly normal, but when the referee speaks on the field to explain a penalty, there is almost no sound. This has been consistently happening for several weeks. It also happens occasionally during commercials. For a few commercials, the voices will be inaudible, but the very next commercial will sound fine. Any suggestions?

ettenna0830

Following for same issue.

[Deleted User]

For those situations try setting your STB (set top box) to PCM.

danwillis

What is a STB? Do you mean cable box? And what is PCM?

txcoastal1

google: cable box bitstream to pcm

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS818US818&ei=WaM7XOumCoaYsAX3zpOIAQ&q=cable+box+bitstream+to+pcm&oq=cable+box+bitstream+to+pcm&gs_l=psy-ab.3...7144.10036..14678...0.0..1.642.2859.1j3j1j3j1j1......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i71j35i304i39.X-UX9x-H6XM

joesephK

if you can't find a audio output setting for pcm in your cable box, try using an optical cable directly from cable box to sound bar. I had this issue and apparently optical gave me PCM. This is probably because my cable box is old and I need a new one (ha) most people will probably not have this issue but figure I'd post my findings anyway

Note- my setup is as follows: I have my cable box connected to my sound bar via hdmi1 and then hdmi arc is connected to the tv. every time I turn on my tv, the soundbar comes on automatically and default to hdmi1. hdmi1 usually works fine but sometimes there is a certain tv show or channel that doesn't seem to have any vocals, so I hit the "TV" button for optical input and voilà! full sound and clear voices.

another thing to note is that if you connect your cable box directly to your tv rather than to one of the sound bar hdmi input, then you may have to change the audio setting in your tv itself rather than the cable box. I have found that the light on the sound bar will be an orange/red color when it is pcm versus green for bitstream or dolby, so fiddle with the options in your tv audio settings until you get a orange light on the sound bar.

joeyjojo

I see this is from 2019, but just happened to me in Dec. 2023 and it's taken me weeks to figure it out. Finally did... There are three volumes I have. Main, bass and voice. The voice was turned all the way up. I turned it all the way down and now I can hear the refs again! I'll be testing and monitoring to see if the middle voice setting is better or at least good enough.