Audio Playback General Question about HDMI Audio and Volume Level of Movie Server

[Dead Eye]

Okay...so earlier this year I upgraded all my home theater gear to 4K. This includes the receiver(Sony STR-DN1080), Sony 65" Smart TV(XBR65X900F) and a Sony 4K Blu-ray Player(UBPx800). I also kept my Sony PS3 and added it to the system. The receiver has a 6 port in / 2 out HDMI switch built in, HDCP v2.2 compliant.

I connected the movie server to the 'Video 1' port and defined it as a 'Net Player' in the receivers setup. I made sure to connect the HDMI output port designated as the 'ARC' port on the receiver to the 'ARC' port on the television(HDMI 3). The problem I was having was when I would watched a movie on the movie server as soon as there was a loud part of a movie, like a sudden burst of gunfire or an explosion the receiver would shutdown with a message on the VFD display that said 'PROTECTOR'. On power up the volume was set to 0. When I read the relevant material on this error message it lead to believe that it was a 'power problem' or a 'bad speaker'(see included pic). I have been dealing with this from the beginning and have tried moving the power plug off my line conditioner and moving the HDMI connection to different ports on the receiver and even tried going directly into the TV, same results every time. The movie servers audio setup was tried with 'Audio Passthrough' on/off with the same problem. Movie Server is at 1.0.3.7.

So the latest movie that I bought was 'Mile 22'...the gunfight inside the house early in the movie tripped the protector circuit on the receiver no matter how the movie server was connected in the system. I played that movie on the Blu-ray player, the PS3 and an HTPC(Intel NUC8i7BEH) on 'Video 2' port and none of them tripped this safety circuit at the same point in the movie. The movie server tripped it consistently. So while going through the Audio portion in the settings on the server I wound up setting the 'Audio Passthrough' to 'On' and left all the receiver compatibility flags to their default 'On' states. After leaving setup I hit the volume toggle on the remote and seen that it was at '100', I ran it all the way down to '0' and played the movie. I did this wondering if I would get audio at all, but when the movie started I got audio so I let it play and..WALA! it didn't trip the safety circuit at the same point it always did before. The receivers master volume I leave at '35' when switching between devices connected to the receiver as this is where I like it when watching TV, Blu-ray, PS3 or content on the HTPC.

So the question I have is what is the relationship between the volume level of the movie server when using HDMI? Using the volume key on the remote after the movie has started generates a message on the screen that has a speaker symbol followed by an 'X' with a message that 'Audio Passthrough' is being activated and doesn't trip the safety circuit.

[october262]

see here - https://helpguide.sony.net/ha/strdn1...001221196.html
make sure that you have the unit connected correctly.

[Dead Eye]

october262...I've spent the last two weeks making sure it was 'connected correctly'...which I'm not sure what that means exactly, it's the power cord and the speakers and I have the speaker wires clearly marked, they are also Sony. The power cord is connected to a high quality line conditioner. Every device connected to the receiver is via HDMI and good quality cables and they only connect one way. Besides, setting the volume level to zero on the movie server seems to have fixed the problem. I watched four movies that I know had tripped the software safety function after setting it to zero and had no problems.

Hence my question as to the relationship of the volume level of the server and the output of the audio stream over HDMI. It appears to me that an amplified audio stream is being passed to the receiver with any value other than ZERO.

[signals]

With Passthrough on, the audio stream is passed to the receiver via HDMI and is not decoded in the DMS (this is why the volume control does not work, that circuitry is turned off with Passthrough). I can't read the image you posted but your receiver seems to have extensive protection sensors built-in. A speaker protector guards the speakers and output ICs in the receiver against overload damage from such things as loud passages, broken/shorted cables etc. Sounds like the receiver gets too much audio from the DMS when the DMS volume is enabled and is set to 100.

[Dead Eye]

Hi signals, well if I am sitting at the home screen and not playing any content and use the volume control on the remote I can see the value go up or down. If I set the volume to 100 there and then go in and play a movie it will trip this protection function so just by empirical observation it seems as though this value is passed on to audio portion of the stream, by the same observation when I set it to zero and play the movie it doesn't trip this function.

My thing is I am happy that this seems to have fixed this problem because I was looking at doing a warranty replacement of the receiver because I thought that maybe the 'trim pot' for this function from the factory was set wrong.

[Dead Eye]

This is a little more visible

[Dead Eye]

Signals, I guess the relevant question becomes when the unit is not playing content is the 'Audio Passthrough' setting applied or just when playing content? With the volume set to zero I get no system sounds when using the menus to navigate, which is no big deal to me. I went through the steps outlined in determining that all my speakers are good.

[signals]

Audio Passthrough should apply only to audio generated by the player (i.e. off of a disc or file) but the defaults and behavior may have changed in some of the firmware updates that we have been through. I set my audio "volume" at about 70 or so and it works fine for most content. I will try it with the current firmware and see what happens and will let you know.

[Dead Eye]

Signals...so I take it that system sounds are routed differently than that of the 'player' function, but if that was true it should not affect the player but in my case it does. It almost seems as though there is a problem there, maybe the firmware dev team can take a look at it? My old Sony receiver didn't have this problem but then I was using an older HDMI switch(v1.3). Like I said, if all I lose is system sounds that is fine by me. I might play around and see at what volume level trips this function down the road but I was just wanting to maybe learn something new.

[Dead Eye]

Update---So Friday(12.21.2018) I decided to watch a couple of movies that I had ripped, Venom and The Predator. I switched to the activity on my Harmony Elite software on my phone and got to the home screen on the server. First thing I did was to make sure the volume was run down to zero then went to the poster wall and found 'Venom' and watched that movie...no problems. After that I went back to the home screen and had to navigate to the video icon because some of the movies don't show up on the poster wall and 'The Predator' is one of them. The first thing I noticed was that there were system sounds, so I checked and sure enough the volume was 'maxed out', so I ran it back down to zero again. I went to the folder that has my movies and found 'The Predator' and started the movie from there. Movie played fine and I had no problems.

When the movie was over I went back to the home screen and checked the volume and again it was maxed out.

This raises a couple of questions...1) How and Why is this happening? and 2) Is there two way communication and/or control over HDMI between devices? The master volume on the receiver did not change, just the volume level on the movie server.

The server log zip file seems to be to big or has problems uploading so tell me what file/files that are needed from it and I'll upload them.

[Dead Eye]

Okay...here is the file from the sever log zip file that has time and date stamp from Fridays session...

[Dead Eye]

I think that when exiting 'Player Mode' it is resetting the volume to 100 when enterig 'System Mode', for some reason.

[Dead Eye]

More observations...So operating on the assumption that when this unit is in 'player mode'(..playing media) versus 'system mode'(..navigating the user interface) the audio pass through parameter is applied differently I thought that given the nature of what I have described above that I could get around that by just hitting the 'MUTE' button while at the home screen, so I did. Went to the poster wall and selected a movie that I had ripped(.mkv) and started playback...no sound. Tried un-muting and got the audio pass through message on the screen, had to stop the movie for it to work.

There also is different behavior based on file extension. While playing MP3 files the volume control on the remote works as expected. Same with MP4 and files that were created using Windows Media Center(*.dvr-ms and *.wtv).

[Dead Eye]

It almost seems as though the audio pass through parameter is only for files with the MKV extension.