T2 New pre-amp wont recognise audio stream

[leighb]

Hi,

Just bought a new Marantz AV7706 pre-amp to replace my ageing AV7701, and for some reason the new AV7706 will not recognise the audio stream format from the Wiz T2 over HDMI, and hence get no sound.

I've managed a workaround by running the video through HDMI and the audio via optical, but it seems like a retrograde step when both audio and video went over one HDMI cable on the AV7701!

Any ideas what's going on? Does the T2 have some weird/old audio stream that newer processors won't recognise?

Cheers for any help.

[MrQuade]

No, there shouldn't be any incompatibility like that in terms of audio support.

Did you by any chance upgrade your receiver so you could play UHD HDR content, and have enabled "Enhanced HDMI" mode on the ports between the T2 and TV?

If so, then this is the likely cause of the loss of audio. The T2's old HDMI chipset doesn't support the latest HDMI video signalling standard and for some reason it causes the audio to drop out.

Your solutions in that instance are to do as you've done and use optical for audio, or you can plug directly into the TV on a port that doesn't have enhanced mode enabled, and rely on ARC for audio.

[exitguy]

Did you by any chance upgrade your receiver so you could play UHD HDR content, and have enabled "Enhanced HDMI" mode on the ports between the T2 and TV?

If so, then this is the likely cause of the loss of audio. The T2's old HDMI chipset doesn't support the latest HDMI video signalling standard and for some reason it causes the audio to drop out.

1. AVRs with Enhanced HDMI settings for ports with the T2 attached will not process/pass-through audio, I know as it took me a call to support to be told that when I purchased the T2 so had to run a SPDIF connection between the T2 and AVR.

2. "this is the likely cause", no it definetly is the cause

[leighb]

Thanks for the replies - I suspected it was something like this. At least it was easy to work around.

Oh, and yes, I did upgrade to play the latest UHD HDR content!

And I couldn't find any settings to assign advanced HDMI to any particular input on rhe 7706 so I'll stick with the solution I have I guess.

[MrQuade]

And I couldn't find any settings to assign advanced HDMI to any particular input on rhe 7706 so I'll stick with the solution I have I guess.

On receivers, the seeing is usually applied to the HDMI output, not the inputs.
On TVs, the setting can be applied separately to the inputs.

That's why it is usually not possible to selectively disable it for some components connected to the receiver, yet still have HDR via other components.

Your mileage may vary here, but personally, when I tried connecting devices the way you have, I also noticed the colour space was a bit "off". The Reds in particular came through as write dull. That's why I connected my older components (Wiz and an older HDMI VCR) directly to the TV's inputs.

[leighb]

For the benefit of others, I actually did find a setting on the preamp whereby you can set HDMI to either "standard" or "enhanced".

I had it on enhanced, as I thought this would apply to all inputs (there no indiocation in the setup menus that I could assign inputs individually), but I later discovered that a whole bunch of settings apply only to the input you happen to be on when the setup mode is entered. So I could have enhanced on the input that handles UHD/HDR, and have the wiz input to standard HDMI and, guess what, it now correctly transports both audio and video over HDMI for the wiz.

Hope this helps others who encounter the same thing....

[MrQuade]

Good find. Glad you persisted

What model receiver? I've not heard of I've that can do that on a power input basis. My poor old Denon can't unfortunately.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

What model receiver?

I assume it's the pre-amp mentioned in the first post - Marantz AV7706.

[MrQuade]

What model receiver?

I assume it's the pre-amp mentioned in the first post - Marantz AV7706.

You expect me to read back 6 whole posts!!??

(it's been a long weekend *lolsob*)

[leighb]

Actually, scrap the whole monologue about different inputs being able to have different HDMI settings. It's been a bit erratic switching between "enhanced" HDMI sources (HDR PC) and "standard" sources (Wiz T2).

It seems that the pre-amp's scaler can be set to on or off for invidual sources, but not the HDMI mode. Anyway, more playing around needed I think...

For now, I'll leave it at "enhanced" for everything. As was noted above by MrQuade the colour space for the standard source looks different, but not necessarily worse - maybe a bit brighter / vivid - I reckon a tweak on the OLED will fix it.