# Premiere Elite Audio problems



## Saberj (Sep 29, 2006)

I've noticed that the new Premiere Elite that we've got sometimes has what I can only describe as "rapid audio stuttering". Has anyone else heard of this happening? Is this for sure something that would be caused by the Tivo box itself? I'm almost through the first 60 days of service, so I'm running out of time to use the 90-day warranty, if it is in fact a box problem.

I can't imagine that it would be a cable card issue. Is that even possible?


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## MeInDallas (Jul 31, 2011)

What is your setup? Are you using the TV speakers, or are you using a soundbar, or audio system?


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

I have a number of audio anomalies with the Premiere that are on the same feed and same switch and same A/V receiver as an S3 and HDXL that DON'T have any audio anomalies. Some of the frustration audio problems of the Premiere:

1. Your "stuttering" problem: audio present for a few seconds, then gone for a few seconds, then back a few seconds, then gone a few seconds, but not a "machine gun" rapid stutter, if that is what you mean? I have to switch the A/V to another input and then back. This fixes is 98% of the time.

2. OUT OF PHASE AUDIO: This happens when all is well and right after a random Skip Back or Skip Forward command. The fix is to either Skip Back or Skip Forward to resume in phase audio. This problem is FREQUENT and occurs about every 1 out of ten or FEWER skip commands.

3. Sometimes the audio seems to fade to a lower level, than return to full level, then fade again and might stay in the fade for quite a long time. I have either leave the recording or channel as what is viewed--changing to some other channel or recording--then go back to the original channel or recording and that usually fixes the problem.

NONE of these problems exist on TWO S3 platform TiVo's hooked up the same way to the same TV and through the same switch and A/V receiver. This is a PREMIERE problem. TiVo, please fix.


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## xbr23 (Mar 29, 2010)

no problems on my Elite running through my 5 yr old Pioneer Elite receiver to my 3 yr old Sony XBR8 TV. all via HDMI.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

No audio problems on my Elite either using HDMI running through a DVDO DUO and a Denon 3808 to my Sammy LED DLP.


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## HazelW (Dec 6, 2007)

I have had what you might call rapid "machine gun" stuttering several times. Sometimes pausing and restarting makes it go away. I have recorded the same program on an HD TiVo and another TV with no problem. I was suspecting the TV, but maybe it is the Elite. Happened on "House" on Fox twice and once on an ABC program.

So far it is so rare that I can probably live with it.


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## Saberj (Sep 29, 2006)

HazelW said:


> I have had what you might call rapid "machine gun" stuttering several times. Sometimes pausing and restarting makes it go away. I have recorded the same program on an HD TiVo and another TV with no problem. I was suspecting the TV, but maybe it is the Elite. Happened on "House" on Fox twice and once on an ABC program.
> 
> So far it is so rare that I can probably live with it.


That's a good description of the problem I'm having. It sounds like the audio is being shot out rapid fire. It's as if the audio is going away every 1/4second or so. Often times it will go away on it's own, but for me, nothing I do seems to help.

For those that asked, I'm using HDMI directly to my TV, and that's where I'm having the issue. On my non-Elite premiere before, I never had any problem like this.

Should I be contacting TiVO about the issue? The other problem is that I actually bought the system in November for a Christmas present for my wife, so if they go by the purchase date rather than the activation date, I might be screwed anyway. It is pretty rare for it to happen. But when it does happen, it's annoying enough that I don't ever want it to happen again.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

The only audio issue I ever had with my Premiere was with analog recordings. Since the Elite doesn't do analog I haven't had any trouble with it. (all analog recordings are now happening on my S3)

Dan


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## hillyard (Nov 1, 2011)

I'll get the stutter on my elite but not on the premier. have to puase and back up a little and it corrects itself. This happens frequently. Elite to sony tv with hdmi


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## djkid4 (Dec 21, 2003)

My premeire elite is showing stereo on my receiver. I reboot the device, then it comes up Dobly digital, and a little while later, it goes back to stereo.

I'm thinking I might have a defective one, thinking about taking it back.

Any thoughts?

Randall


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Most of the channels on FiOS are stereo Dolby Digital channels. (most of the SD channels) Dolby digital on broadcast channels can be anything from 1.0 to 5.1. I've seen those two and every option in between for DD channels during the last eleven years.


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## djkid4 (Dec 21, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> Most of the channels on FiOS are stereo Dolby Digital channels. (most of the SD channels) Dolby digital on broadcast channels can be anything from 1.0 to 5.1. I've seen those two and every option in between for DD channels during the last eleven years.


I'm with timewarner cable. These are Dobly digital 5.1.

Like: two and a half men. Ect.

I can transfer the, and it comes DD.


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## Saberj (Sep 29, 2006)

Well, I sent a message to TiVo Support concerning my issue. Here is the response I got back:



> Thank you for contacting TiVo Customer Support. I would be happy to assist you with that Audio issue. I understand that this can be frustrating. I do have a few steps you can try to resolve this audio issue, Randall.
> 
> Step 1.) Cold boot - Please remove all the cables from the back of the TiVo box. Wait at least 60 seconds. Then plug the power cord and the video cable that goes to the TV, e.g. HDMI cable. Once back at TiVo Central you would replace the rest of the cables.
> 
> ...


Then they went on to say I should contact them again if that didn't fix the problem. I'm going to try and run through these steps today, and hopefully it will clear the issue up for good.


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## dcstager (Feb 16, 2002)

My new Elite has likewise developed the audio problem where Dolby digital is output as PCM regardless of the audio setting. It's a bug or a hardware problem with the Elite.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

dcstager said:


> My new Elite has likewise developed the audio problem where Dolby digital is output as PCM regardless of the audio setting. It's a bug or a hardware problem with the Elite.


Have you tried rebooting it? I have not personally experienced it, but I have experienced this with an S3 box before and a reboot fixed it.


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## cptlapcat (Oct 4, 2007)

dcstager said:


> My new Elite has likewise developed the audio problem where Dolby digital is output as PCM regardless of the audio setting. It's a bug or a hardware problem with the Elite.


I also am having audio problems with my new Elite on Dolby digital. When I fast forward or 30 second skip after the third click sometimes the audio drops. This only happens on a recorded show. The only way to get the sound back is to turn the power off and then back on.

Any ideas?


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## dcstager (Feb 16, 2002)

A reboot fixes it temporarily. I actually think it has something to do with sound effects volume. It has to be set to off because if it isn't, the sound are output as PCM audio. Normally you don't hear sounds when playing back a Dolby Digital source, but I think the software is trying to switch back and forth and the code isn't perfected. I'm turning sound effects off an seeing if that prevents the problem re-occurring. And yes I've reset my amplifier to make sure it was not the problem.


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## dcstager (Feb 16, 2002)

Turning off sound effects made no difference. I do not know if this is a hardware or software bug, but Dolby digital sound is output as PCM regardless of the setting in audio. I do not know what triggers the condition.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

dcstager said:


> A reboot fixes it temporarily. I actually think it has something to do with sound effects volume. It has to be set to off because if it isn't, the sound are output as PCM audio. Normally you don't hear sounds when playing back a Dolby Digital source, but I think the software is trying to switch back and forth and the code isn't perfected. I'm turning sound effects off an seeing if that prevents the problem re-occurring. And yes I've reset my amplifier to make sure it was not the problem.


I always leave my sound effects on. But the two receivers I'm using with three of my Premieres are a Sony and a Denon. Although I'm rarely on a menu that I can hear sound effects anymore, I have not had any issues with the Premieres switching to PCM only output.


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## dcstager (Feb 16, 2002)

This might be something unique to the Elite which has four digital cable tuners and no over the air tuner. My latest best guess is that the Hulu Plus application is responsible for screwing up the Dolby Digital output. I contacted Tivo and they said the problem has not been reported to them before.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

dcstager said:


> Turning off sound effects made no difference. I do not know if this is a hardware or software bug, but Dolby digital sound is output as PCM regardless of the setting in audio. I do not know what triggers the condition.


It's could be an issue between the receiver and the TiVo. At least with HDMI some devices don't interact well with each other.

Hulu+ has no detrimental effect in my setup.


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## cptlapcat (Oct 4, 2007)

dcstager said:


> A reboot fixes it temporarily. I actually think it has something to do with sound effects volume. It has to be set to off because if it isn't, the sound are output as PCM audio. Normally you don't hear sounds when playing back a Dolby Digital source, but I think the software is trying to switch back and forth and the code isn't perfected. I'm turning sound effects off an seeing if that prevents the problem re-occurring. And yes I've reset my amplifier to make sure it was not the problem.


I did reboot the Tivo and have not had any problems for two days. I hope this does the trick.


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## dcstager (Feb 16, 2002)

I've got hdmi direct to the tv and a digital optical cable direct to the receiver. Resetting the receiver completely doesn't fix the issue. I having difficulty believing Tivo's advice to replace the optical cable. What could possibly wear out or go wrong in an optical cable?


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## bsmith1051 (Nov 15, 2009)

I'm having problems with dropouts but it only happens on certain channels. It's not rapid-fire or even that consistent, but it's enough to interfere with watching those channels. I had assumed it was an HDMI handshake problem but I've now removed the HDMI and replaced it with component video and digital-optical audio; same problem. So I'm inclined to think the Tivo is having a problem outputting a clean DD signal. This happens consistently on the same spots of my recordings, too. So the channels would seem to be 'at fault' except that everything plays back fine if I switch the Tivo to PCM.

I'm probably going to call Tivo this weekend.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

dcstager said:


> I've got hdmi direct to the tv and a digital optical cable direct to the receiver. Resetting the receiver completely doesn't fix the issue. I having difficulty believing Tivo's advice to replace the optical cable. What could possibly wear out or go wrong in an optical cable?


That is standard trouble shooting. I've run into my share of bad optical cables when I used them in the 90's and early 2000's. All it takes is for the cable to be pinched in a spot and it can cause issues. But just like with anything that uses a cable, replacing the cable is one the steps in troubleshooting to rule out the cable as an issue.


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## Jackamus (Sep 20, 2010)

I have only had the Eliet going on for about two weeks. So far, I have not encountered this issue.

Hope you find a solution.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

dcstager said:


> My new Elite has likewise developed the audio problem where Dolby digital is output as PCM regardless of the audio setting. It's a bug or a hardware problem with the Elite.


I had this problem watching football on Saturday - my Elite was outputting PCM no matter what the source had. Going into menus and toggling between Dolby and PCM had no effect, the only fix was to reboot the Tivo. I always have sound effects turned off so that has nothing to do with it. I have HDMI going to TV and optical going to my AVR.

I've also seen cases where skip forward/back will result in stereo being sent to TV as mono (I can tell because my TV has good directional sound), but another skip gets it working again. This happens on a fairly regular basis.

Definitely a bug in both cases, my Tivo HDs never did this.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

slowbiscuit said:


> I had this problem watching football on Saturday - my Elite was outputting PCM no matter what the source had. Going into menus and toggling between Dolby and PCM had no effect, the only fix was to reboot the Tivo. I always have sound effects turned off so that has nothing to do with it. I have HDMI going to TV and optical going to my AVR.
> 
> I've also seen cases where skip forward/back will result in stereo being sent to TV as mono (I can tell because my TV has good directional sound), but another skip gets it working again. This happens on a fairly regular basis.
> 
> Definitely a bug in both cases, my Tivo HDs never did this.


I've had this happen two or three time over the last five or six months in my main setup, but in my case I just turned the receiver off, then back on and it was in DD again. The few times it's happened I've never rebooted the TiVo.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

While that might fix the issue (I'll try it next time), I have to say I never saw it in 4 years of use with the HDs using the same Onkyo AVR. The Elite, so far, has been much more flaky than the HDs ever were (lost signal on all channels once even though signal was fine, now DD audio probs, and the HDUI is useless to me because it regularly forgets the pause/resume points in recordings).

The only flaky thing I saw on the HDs was an occasional reboot when going into DVR Diags, a very minor issue. Tuning, recording, playback etc. were all great.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

slowbiscuit said:


> While that might fix the issue (I'll try it next time), I have to say I never saw it in 4 years of use with the HDs using the same Onkyo AVR. The Elite, so far, has been much more flaky than the HDs ever were (lost signal on all channels once even though signal was fine, now DD audio probs, and the HDUI is useless to me because it regularly forgets the pause/resume points in recordings).
> 
> The only flaky thing I saw on the HDs was an occasional reboot when going into DVR Diags, a very minor issue. Tuning, recording, playback etc. were all great.


The audio issue is recent for me but it is rare. I've had no issues with the pause/resume points on my Elites. Unless I'm near the very end of the recording when I pause/exit, then it won't resume. But that is normal behavior.


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