Question Audio delay in new AV Receiver - what's normal?

[Steve Adam]

I've just taken delivery of a Sony STR DN1080 to replace an old Marantz SR5300 (still perfectly good but hampered by only being able to accept surround sound via TOSLink/SPDIF).

I was surprised to find that the new receiver has a noticeable audio processing lag. I have measured this to be about 68ms - that is, the sound from the amp arrive 68ms later than the sound/picture on my TV. This means that lip sync is out by approx 1.5 frames. Not the end of the world, but noticeable to me (I am a video editor by profession and I know anything I delivered that was out by this much would be rejected). It's also something I wasn't noticing on my older set-up.

The AV SYNC feature of the Amp only allows me to delay the audio further, so this does not help. It's consistent across sources and the delay is still there when switching to direct mode.

I am currently using a relatively old Panasonic 32" LCD TV. It's not doing much, if anything in the way of image processing.

I appreciate that there is always going to be some processing lag, but 68ms seems high to me. My question is - is a native lag of the order I mention usual for AV amps? Other internet posts suggest that it is usually TV pictures that lag behind as they take longer to process than modern TVs, so have I just been unlucky to have an older TV that happens to be much faster? Do I need to upgrade my TV to a more modern model with higher spec HDMI sockets to bring things into line?

Or am I just being picky?

 

[bigboss]

That's strange, because audio can never come BEFORE video. So the audio sync should work.

STR-DN1080 | Help Guide | Synchronizing audio with video output (A/V Sync)

I'm assuming, you've connected your TV to amp via HDMI cable?

 

[Steve Adam]

Yes - sources (blu ray, player, ROKU stick) via HDMI to receiver and via HDMI to TV.

So I'm clear about what I'm experiencing, in order to measure it, I have turned up the TV speaker to get the sound coming from the amp via HDMI at the same time as the AV speakers (which of course are being driven directly by the amp). If you use something like the ROKU remote to get a pipping noise when you navigate the menu, you can hear the delay. I recorded this on a field recorder and that's how I was able to measure the difference. When someone is speaking, you get a similar slap back effect similar to what you might hear from a PA reflecting off a back wall in a stadium.

So I'm suggesting that the amp has an inbuilt processing delay of around 68ms whereas the audio being passed through to the TV isn't subject to this delay, and hence in my particular set-up my TV is reproducing sound before the amp can.