Lip-synch issues with Denon DVD1940 via optical out

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Been having a rather odd issue with the Denon DVD1940 I treated myself to for Christmas. If I hook it up via HDMI to my Samsung LE37R87BDX 37" LCD, and output the sound via HDMI to the tv, everything works fine and it's all in synch.

However, if I use an optical cable and connect this to my Sony STRDB790 AV receiver, there's a noticeable lip-synch issue, the receiver plays the audio first before the picture.

Having checked the manuals for both the Denon and the Sony, there's no obvious option to set a time delay in milliseconds to try and re-synch the audio. Is there anything I can do about it, or is it a case of seeing if I can get the Denon swapped out for another player?

 

[Anonymous]

I have exactly the same problem. Everything's fine when just using HDMI but when I connect the audio via RCA Phono's albeit to my Stereo Amp the fun and games begin.

I have complained to DENON who have advised me to buy an AV receiver with built in Audio Delay.

To be quite honest can't see you will be able to return the Denon because the player itself isn't at fault and has more to do with the video processing of your Samsung-( All HDTV's in Fact) I have a Samsung TV-Plasma 42inch.

To resolve the problem you will have to invest in this www.felston.com

Swapping your Denon for another player may not resolve the problem either, though I have been advised directly from OPPO in California USA that their DVD Players do include Audio Delay http://www.oppodigital.com/

Quote they say The DV-980H has a built in Delay which can be applied to the player up to 100ms at 10ms intervals. This should allow you to compensate for any audio delay errors you may be experiencing on your display

Denon and the like, knowing full well that many people are having this problem with Lip Synch should as a matter of course include Audio Delay in their DVD players.......not say you need to spend more money and buy an AVR with Audio Delay and which may not too resolve the problem so you may well have to also look into the possibility of investing in a Felston audio delay unit

 

[Andrew Everard]

[quote user="WazP"]
However, if I use an optical cable and connect this to my Sony STRDB790 AV receiver, there's a noticeable lip-synch issue, the receiver plays the audio first before the picture.

[/quote]

This may be a rather kludgy solution, and may not work completely, but try setting your centre speaker distance to the minimum - ie 1.0m if your set-up will allow, given that the centre distance can't be more than 1.5m less than that to the main left/right speakers - and see whether that helps.

It will make the receiver apply more delay - around 5ms if my maths serves me correctly - to the centre, which is carrying almost all of the dialogue in surround-encoded movies, and might just help drag the speech nearer to synchronisation with the pictures.

It's worth a try - and a lot cheaper than buying a digital delay unit.

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="Andrew Everard"]

This may be a rather kludgy solution, and may not work completely, but try setting your centre speaker distance to the minimum - ie 1.0m if your set-up will allow - and see whether that helps.[/quote]

Thanks for that, Andrew. Thankfully the Sony STRDB790's minimum speaker distance is 1.0m, so I set that and the fronts to that distance (I've got several Dolby Digital 2.0 DVDs as well so it'd make sense).

It's still not perfect, but it's a fair bit less noticeable now at least.

One other idea I was going to run with was to output the audio and video via HDMI to the Samsung TV, and then use the Samsung's optical out to connect that up to the Sony receiver. Using this method instead, the audio's pretty much in synch, but (and here's the but) you can't output the Dolby Digital signal through it. The Denon's HDMI options, even if multi channel audio are set, only allows to set the front speakers and outputs 2 channels only to the Samsung TV. Aaargh. (unless someone knows a way around this of course)

Still, I do think that DVD player manufacturers should bear in mind that we can't all upgrade everything at once and that you can't rely on the AV receiver having audio delay (the new ones do of course, but when I have a 3 year old fully working Sony receiver with a sound I like...) so have the delay in milliseconds as a built in option. If the Sky HD boxes can do it, it can't be that difficult, can it?

 

[Anonymous]

I don't have an AVR Reciever instead choosing to listen to the audio of my Denon DVD 1940 via my Exposure Stereo Amp and Monitor Audio BR1 speakers. Like your AVR amp my amp doesn't have audio delay so in an effort to try and find a solution to virtually the same problem as you, albeit mine is purely a Stereo amp I have been emailing all and sundry in the technical world to try and help resolve my Lip Synch problems and yesterday received what just may a cost effective solution to my problem in the form of a Behringer DSP2024 from www.kentmusictechnology.co.uk

The unit costs £70.08 plus Vat and here's an extract of the response I received from them:

The Behringer Virtualizer Pro DSP2024 (KMT Price £70.08 plus VAT) is a multi-effects unit with delay and might do the job. I've just had a quick look at the manual and it has a 'fine tune' function for delay in 1ms steps which is ideal. You would just plug the Denon audio outs into the Behringer inputs and the Behringer outputs to your amp. You will have to match the plugs with leads and/or adaptors but connection should be fairly easy.

 

[Anonymous]

I've been having a tweak of the settings, and have managed to get pretty close to as it was intended.

If you've set the audio out on the Denon 1940 to be analogue instead of through the HDMI cable (I do this because I listen to my DVD-Audio through the 5.1 outs) then you can select the analogue audio to be either 2 channel or multichannel, and once you've done that there's a setting for analogue delay in terms of metres from the speaker.

Using Andrew's earlier guidelines that I did for the AV receiver, I found that on the Denon you can set the speaker distance as little as 0.0 metres where needed, so I simply set that up for all the audio channels concerned (5.1 in my case).

Now, using the 5.1 outs and setting the Sony receiver to "multi in" (normally used for DVDA and SACD) and playing various DVDs, and comparing that with the timing of the HDMI out options, it was pretty much as close as you could get it (in fact in some cases, it was pretty equal.

Here's the big kicker though. Listening through the optical out, I found that because of the settings I'd changed, the audio was just as close in synch as it was using the analogue 5.1 outs once I'd changed those settings over.

May be worth a try for anyone else in the meantime if that hasn't been tried?

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Tallyho

I am faced with an identical problem to you.Samsung LCD TV connected to Arcam Alpha 8 Stereo Amp. Ive noticed a conciderable lip sync error. I would be very interested to know if you tried the Behringer Virtualizer Pro DSP2024 and what your thoughts are on whether it has achieved lip sync and if the sound quality is Affected

Regards Jen