While I have been loving my PS3 so far, the odd issue of crackling noise coming from my speakers when high pitched noises came about during a game (much like static in the audio hardware). It was annoying during Gran Turismo when you hit gravel and this static noise kicked up. It also would come up randomly. It made the Motorstorm demo unplayable. The odd thing was that it didn't come up at all while watching Casino Royale so I figured it was a game thing. Time to debug!
It could either be the PS3, the TV (an Envision), or the HDMI cable. First I made sure it was not my speakers. I have my Klipsch speakers hooked up to the TV, so I made sure they were not the cause. When I switched to the built-in speakers for the TV the crackling was still there.
I really doubted the HDMI cable as it's Monster Cable and I never had any issues when I used it with my DVD player (which I am keeping since it does upscaling). But to double-check I broke out the composite cables for the PS3; no crackling.
That left the TV or the PS3. Now as I said, the TV has never had issues with DVDs, so I was really worried it was the PS3. But I had no good way to test that as I don't know a soul locally who has a TV with an HDMI port. So I tried everything I could at home. I changed every setting on the television I could for audio and nothing fixed it.
That left the PS3. Hoping I didn't have to take the thing back, I started playing with the manual options for audio. That's when I discovered the Settings -> Sound Settings -> Audio Output Settings: HDMI -> Manual option in the menu. There you can specify the encodings that the PS3 tries to use with the television. I noticed the only ones chosen were Dolby Digital 5.1 and two PCM encodings that were 5.1. My TV is stereo only and doesn't have any audio decoders, so I turned off what I could (Dolby Digital 5.1) and turned on PCM two channel.
That solved it! I guess the TV was picking up some signal data from the Dolby Digital signal that it misinterpreted as a crackling noise.
3 comments:
There are various issues with HDMI support and PS3s. You can search for 'ps3 audio problems' or 'ps3 video problems' to get a sampling. The short story: Sony's HDMI handshaking sucks.
Yeah, I heard that before. At least they seem to be working on it for every firmware revision.
And at least the system has an HDMI port unlike the Wii. I really wish the Wii did higher than 480p.
I had the exact same issue (with Gran Turismo) with the exact TV (Envision)!
I did what you did. Went to audio settings, but I already had Dobly 5.1 unchecked, and 2 of my linear options ARE checked, but are greyed out so I can't uncheck them. I also don't have an option for bitstream...
actually did this through the XMB:
Settings
BD/DVD settings
BD/DVD audio output format (HDMI)
And I changed it to Bitstream instead of Linear PCM from there. Seemed to work, but when I changed it I got a message saying that some audio portions may not play if set to bitsream. Wonder if I should be concerned with this?
I'm leaning more and more towards using HDMI for video and component for audio.
If you have any other comments, please let me know:
pauljo2006@hotmail.com
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