Audio/Video Sync w/X1 Xfinity+Optical Audio

August 23, 2016 3:21 PM

Looking for any advice on why audio is out of sync with my video when using a Samsung soundbar connected to the X1 box via optical audio.

What is says on the tin...

My setup is X1 box video connected to TV via HDMI and audio (from the X1 box) connected to my Samsung soundbar via optical audio. Over the last year, it seems the audio has become progressively faster than the video. I know that the audio signal is "processed" faster, but is it that simple? The only solution I can think of is to connect the soundbar to the TV via the optical cable. No advanced audio settings are available on the X1 box.

posted by kuanes to Technology (3 answers total)

I don't know what the problem is but can say that I have my soundbar connected to my TV's optical out and it works well. It has the additional benefit of routing the correct audio to the soundbar when I switch TV inputs. I have a Samsung TV, Vizio soundbar, RCN TiVo set top box, Apple TV and DVD player and it all works well with this setup. Each device is connected to the TV by HDMI and the optical cable goes from the TV to the soundbar.
posted by santry at 3:27 PM on August 23, 2016

It's probably not that the sound is being processed "faster", it's that the TV is processing "slower".

A lot of TVs take extra time to process the video frames as they arrive. If your TV does any kind of motion smoothing, even more so. Even a frame delay of 1 or 2 frames will be noticeably out of sync with the audio.

Since you can't delay the audio coming out of the cable box, your only bet is probably to do what you mentioned: connect the soundbar directly to the TV and hope that the TV delays its audio output to match the video frame being displayed.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:36 PM on August 23, 2016

I had this same issue that I corrected by using the TV's optical out as others have mentioned.
posted by Dr. Twist at 1:18 PM on August 24, 2016