Nvidia Shield volume too high on Polk MagniFi MAX
peti007
Posts: 7
I have an Nvidia Shiled TV what connects to the Polk MagniFi MAX's HDMI1 and the the soundbar is connected to my TV's HDMI. I enabled the HDMI-CEC volume control on Shield. With this option, the Shield's volume is maximized and if I adjust the volume with the Shield's remote it adjusts the soundbar's volume over HDMI-CEC. My problem is the volume is too high with the soundbar's minimum sound level. I can't lower it more, because then it switch to mute. Nvidia say it is not Shield's fault ask Polk. They say "SHIELDs volume by default is like 95% of other devices on the market".
Answers
-
With this option, the Shield's volume is maximized
That sounds like a design flaw.Political Correctness'.........defined
"A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a t-u-r-d by the clean end."
President of Club Polk -
Yes it is. My problem is the volume is too high on the soundbar.That sounds like a design flaw.
-
No, the problem is the Nvidia device has a design flaw.Political Correctness'.........defined
"A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a t-u-r-d by the clean end."
President of Club Polk -
HDMI seems to be a completely stupid and unreliable standard (not IEEE designed, like DVI-D was), but oh well, we’re stuck with it. HDMI-CEC is as temperamental and “moody” as they come.
I would try this:- Unplug all devices.
- Unplug all HDMI cables.
- Plug in all devices.
- Carefully plug in HDMI cables (use different cables if you have any spares).
- Restart.
Alea jacta est! -
Thanks Kex, I tried what you advised, but no success. But I checked all settings on Shield, soundbar, TV and I found something interesting. Maybe the TV cause the problem.
My setup:
The orange lines are the HDMI cables.
So the strange thing is the Shield is connected directly to the soundbar and the soundbar forwards the signal to the TV. I tought only the picture and the soundbar plays the sound. But on TV there is a VIERA Link (HDMI-CEC) settings menu, where there are two settings for sound: TV or Home cinema. If this is Home cinema the Polk sounds if TV then the TV's speaker. So maybe the sound goes to the TV and then back to soundbar. But there is no HDMI-ARC connector on my old Panasonic plasma.
Is there any option on soundbar to not forward the sound to the HDMI OUT? I can't see anything similar in users manual. -
I tried to disconnect the TV from soundbar, SHIELD still connects to the soundbar and there is no sound. If I connect the TV back, the sound comes back. Why does it need the TV to sound? I guessed the sound goes to the soundbar it process it and only the picture forwarded to the TV.
-
Your connection images above seem correct to me.
I don’t have a sound bar, but the way this would work with a normal receiver is that the receiver would be responsible for sound control, not Shield (or the TV). I think your TV is too old (about ten years?) to have ARC. I’m even moderately surprised that it has CEC. Setting the TV to “Home Cinema” would merely turn off the TV speakers AFAIK. The only sound that would have to come from the TV to the sound bar would be OTA (live broadcast) TV. For that to work, you would need to connect your TV to the sound bar using an optical (or TOSLINK) cable.
If you have an optical cable lying around, it might be worth connecting it between the sound bar and the TV to see what happens (wondering why disconnecting the HDMI cable from the TV caused the sound bar to stop producing sound from the Shield). There could be a software quirk, although that would seem odd.
What remote are you using to control sound? In a standard setup with a receiver instead of a sound bar, you would either have to use the receiver’s remote to control sound and input source, or, your source remote (the Shield in this case) would have to “learn” how to control the sound bar using IR or Bluetooth (not sure which options are available with the Magnifi MAX).Alea jacta est! -
The volume is controlled over HDMI-CEC with Shield remote mainly. The strange thing if I lower the volume with Shield remote (what is BT connected) the volume OSD is appears on TV (the TV's own OSD). This is why I started to suspect the TV is sinner.
If I control the volume with the TV's remote or the soundbar's there is no difference.
I have optical cable, but it doesn't support 5.1 PCM audio. -
Can you get the Shield to work correctly if you connect it directly to the TV, without using the sound bar? Does this work with only HDMI? Does this work only if the optical cable is also connected?
When using the sound bar, I would also try to connect the optical cable supplied with the Polk between the TV and the sound bar since the TV does not have ARC (audio is not being sent over HDMI).
Have you tried a paring procedure to pair the Shield remote with the Polk?Alea jacta est! -
P.S. also make sure that the firmware is updated on both the Shield and the Polk sound bar.Alea jacta est!
-
The firmware is up to date on soundbar and Shield too.
If I connect Shield directly to the TV via HDMI and the sound goes from the TV to the soundbar over optical cable the situation is the same. In this case I can lower the Shield's system volume (HDMI CEC volume is disabled) but with Dolby and DTS passthrough the volume level is the same as directly connect Shield to soundbar with HDMI.
Works only HDMI or only optical or HDMI+optical too. But over optical the LPCM 5.1 not works. And I have to connect the cable box with the optical to the soundbar.
I can't pair the Shield's remote with the soundbar, because it not uses IR but BT.
