Bad digital cable sound?

StopherJJ1980
StopherJJ1980 Posts: 267
edited January 2006 in Troubleshooting
I have Cox digital cable in Phoenix, AZ. Does anyone else have cable and notice certain channels just suck when it comes to sound. Like by me big channels like FOX, ESPN2, and Comedy Central have really sub par sound when played through my system. I have the box connected by my digital coax cable to my AVR. But then other channels like ESPN, MTV, NBC, discovery, history, etc. are clear as a bell.

Is this normal? Anything I can do about it?
-Stopher
Tempe, AZ

Setup:
Polk RTi8 Mains
Polk CSi5 Center
Polk FXi3's Surround
Cerwin Vega HTS10 Subwoofer
Yamaha HTR-5740 AVR

Upstairs R50/R15/CS1 5.1 setup w Pioneer AVR
Post edited by StopherJJ1980 on
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Comments

  • steveinaz
    steveinaz Posts: 19,538
    edited January 2006
    I noticed Foxs' terrible SQ years ago--it does sound like crap.
    Source: Bluesound Node 2i - Preamp/DAC: Benchmark DAC2 DX - Amp: Parasound Halo A21 - Speakers: MartinLogan Motion 60XTi - Shop Rig: Yamaha A-S501 Integrated - Shop Spkrs: Elac Debut 2.0 B5.2
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  • SKsolutions
    SKsolutions Posts: 1,820
    edited January 2006
    As I understand it, it depends on your cable company's channel line up, and how much they compress the signal and in what bands of the cable's width they fall. That's the front end. The rear end, you have some control over. If you upgrade to their HD box, the media adaptor and DAC inside is usually of a better quality and uses larger wavetables or equivalent to decompress the signals giving a larger pool of reference points and a truer audio waveform. This is a simplified version of what I can remember after looking up how the cable bandwidth is split up (Comcast). There is usually some interplay or adjacent channeling of upstreem internet traffic as well in some cable companies, so they might compress the audio and video more to make room for these pipelines.
    -Ignorance is strength -
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  • SKsolutions
    SKsolutions Posts: 1,820
    edited January 2006
    um, yeah, that.
    -Ignorance is strength -
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  • bknauss
    bknauss Posts: 1,441
    edited January 2006
    Are you getting sort of a hissing on the high end? This would probably be due to compression and a big smile curve EQ causing digital clipping. It sounds terrible and makes regular analog TV much more pleasant.
    Brian Knauss
    ex-Electrical Engineer for Polk
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  • louhamilton
    louhamilton Posts: 209
    edited January 2006
    I notice many times that my receiver shows that the CBS HD program I am watching is DD 5.1, but there is definately only two channels (the fronts) producing sound.

    Adelphia seems to send pretty good sound to my system.

    -Lou
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  • SKsolutions
    SKsolutions Posts: 1,820
    edited January 2006
    Ohhh. I LOVE the "hissing". I also love that "swirly" variety associated with cheap decompression.

    With the hissing, I'd upgrade the box to HD if they offer it. You would then get the 5.1 channel. Let's hope there is at least one without distortion.
    -Ignorance is strength -
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  • HiPerf360
    HiPerf360 Posts: 436
    edited January 2006
    My Cox box is HD connected by an optical cable.

    I have good sound on all of my channels but when the local channels take over the signal (for news, local commercials breaking weather, etc.) the sound goes to shi..
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