Sound Corruption Through HDMI on Sony Bravia KD-75X89J

[willdabeast]

Hi all, hoping I can get some help, I've run out of ideas to remedy this.

I have a new TV (Sony Bravia KD-75X89J), purchased in Jan, as it has 4k 120Hz HDMI we've started to use this with a laptop for gaming, youtube, etc. but have been having some intermittent sound corruption issues through HDMI.

Video of issue on YT (volume up please, phone camera didn't pick up the pre-ample to the corruption so first half of video is quite silent): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpeMCxtuVJo

What happens: the audio starts going 'tinny' then develops quickly into garbled corruption and eventually rights itself, this usually goes on for about a minute or two on average.

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for it and although sometimes it doesn't do it at all, when it does start doing this there seems to be some timing to it, i.e. every 5 minutes or so. It tends to settle down after a while (i.e. when watching a movie). Particularly if not paused.

There are occasions where this doesn't happen for hours, or a whole night (very rarely), other times it cycles through this every 5 minutes. Seems like some type of latency corruption to me over HDMI. Sometimes it does it then settles down for an hour.

I have tried a different HDMI cable, different HDMI slot on both laptop and TV. I've tried updating the firmware on both the TV and the BIOS of the laptop. I've updated the Nvidia drivers on the laptop and also rolled back to an older version. I've tried changing the audio settings around on the TV.

The laptop is a AMD based Lenovo with a 3070. The corruption does not occur when using any of the TV's other functions, just through HDMI. The laptop also has no issues with any other audio out/device. There are no resource issues on the laptop when it occurs either (everything is low usage in Task Manager when watching movies and the standard GPU/CPU utilisation when playing games). The HDMI video is fine while the sound corruption is occurring also.

[Griffin_door]

Hi, Have you tried setting the HDMI signal format to enhanced?
https://helpguide.sony.net/tv/iaep1/v1/en/04-09_02.html

Also, Does this happen only on your laptop? for example have you tested this on a different laptop or a console?

[willdabeast]

Hi Griffin_door, I've not tried on another device as I don't have one suitable but have tried all the HDMI modes and it does occur on all of them.

[HannahEd01]

@ willdabeast did you try another port? Another cable?

[willdabeast]

Hi Hannah, yes I've tried two different 8k hdmi cables (well above 4k @@120hz spec that I'm using) I've tried both the two 4k ports on the TV and a different HDMI port on the laptop.

It has been happening every 5 mins every night lately, seems cyclic, like something is running out of memory of some type of latency being introduced, trouble is I don't know where from. I disabled the network card on the PC last night to see if there was potentially some signal bleed through the PCI-E bus but it did not change. Running out of ideas.

Kind regards,

Will

[HannahEd01]

@ willdabeast, could you try changing the digital audio out to PCM?

[willdabeast]

Hi Hannah, I'm using PCM in general, but I'd tried all the digital out settings. The TV had another problem last night, the image kept flicking off using both HDMI and even in the Netflix app, restarted the TV which resolved it but starting to think something is wrong with the hardware.

[HannahEd01]

@ willdabeast, if you did all the basics (power cycle, SW update, Factory reset) that might be a hardware issue and  your TV needs inspection, are you still within warranty?

[willdabeast]

It was purchased in January, even the basic warranty is 1 year here. Played some games last night at 120hz and had no issues whatsoever, very strange. It's been doing it every 5 minutes for weeks and then nothing, no sound issues, no display issues that was occurring the night before. Since we've had the TV it has restarted itself a few times while watching Netflix. Occasionally there are horizontal scan lines that pop up and persist until its power cycled. would these warrant a replacement or general oddities of Android based tvs? Hard to request tech support if the issues are intermittent?

[HannahEd01]

@ willdabeast, maybe it updated itself overnight? Good for you anyway