Poor sound quality with airplay on Apple TV

[Ghost407]

Hi all! Sorry if this has been covered somewhere else, but when using AirPlay with the most recent iteration of the Apple TV the sound quality seems to take a dump. I assumed Possibly the settings of my receiver were the issue but I tried airplay on different Apple TV and the problem was exactly the same! The sound is muffled and only really plays out of one channel. Sorry again if this has been covered but I have searched the forum and the internet and can't seem to find a solution. I am using an iPad Pro with the Vudu app, have also tried my iPhone but the problem persists. All other apps stream audio and video great. Not sure what the problem is. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Jake]

Re: Poor sound quality with airplay on Apple TV

Which movie(s) did you try? And you are saying the ATV is connected to a receiver - can you tell if the receiver show DD/DD+/PCM and how many channels it sees?

[Ghost407]

Re: Poor sound quality with airplay on Apple TV

Which movie(s) did you try? And you are saying the ATV is connected to a receiver - can you tell if the receiver show DD/DD+/PCM and how many channels it sees?

The ATV is connected to the receiver via HDMI and it shows PCM, it appears to see the center channel and front R and front L channels (that's all I have connected to it). I have watched Fantastic Beasts and Hacksaw Ridge, both had the same problem on two different ATVs and two different receivers, also tried airplay with both my iPhone and my iPad producing the same problem. Thanks for the reply!

[Ghost407]

Re: Poor sound quality with airplay on Apple TV

Sorry for the double up!

[Ghost407]

Re: Poor sound quality with airplay on Apple TV

Any help or am I just SOL?

[Jake]

Re: Poor sound quality with airplay on Apple TV

I checked with VUDU QA and they were not able to reproduce this on any DD+ 7.1/5.1/2.0 tests (including Fantastic Beasts). They specifically found:

"it showed DD Digital on the display with 5 channels [L,C,R,SL,SR]. Sounds were confirmed on 5 speakers (plus 2 additional R.rear and L.rear)."

(this makes sense because the ATV 4th gen decodes DD+ and then re-encodes in DD, for whatever reason...)

Could you check the settings on your ATV to see if it's forcing some non-default audio setting? And maybe even try any different setting (Surround instead of Auto, etc) to see if it helps?

[Ghost407]

Re: Poor sound quality with airplay on Apple TV

I checked with VUDU QA and they were not able to reproduce this on any DD+ 7.1/5.1/2.0 tests (including Fantastic Beasts). They specifically found:

"it showed DD Digital on the display with 5 channels [L,C,R,SL,SR]. Sounds were confirmed on 5 speakers (plus 2 additional R.rear and L.rear)."

(this makes sense because the ATV 4th gen decodes DD+ and then re-encodes in DD, for whatever reason...)

Could you check the settings on your ATV to see if it's forcing some non-default audio setting? And maybe even try any different setting (Surround instead of Auto, etc) to see if it helps?

Thank you for the response! I haven't been home for a while but I'll try again and report back.

[Ghost407]

Re: Poor sound quality with airplay on Apple TV

Alright, I was able to fix it. I went into the audio/video settings of the ATV and changed the "surround sound" setting from "best available" to "Dolby Digital 5.1" and I changed the "audio mode" setting from "auto" to "16 bit". This resolved my problem. Must have been a miscommunication between my receiver and my ATV. Thanks for the help! I'm really excited that it works now!