# No sound



## leighv

I now have just recently got no sound on any of my channels thru Tivo. I have connected my TV straight up to the and there is sound. I have checked all the Scart leads. Any ideas? Thanks.


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## Robert S

Reboot?


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## childe

Did you fix this problem? My Dad's Tivo has just lost sound on all channels he watches or records via Tivo.

He can still hear sound on old recordings. He can hear sound directly from his Sky box. But via Live TV, or if he presses the aux button he gets no sound.

He has restarted both his Tivo and his sky box, and can't see any obviously loose cables.

He has not changed any of the connections since it was working. He did recently have a problem getting the Tivo to dial for updates, but a restart did fix that. I don't know if there is a connection

Any ideas?

Eric


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## Robert S

_ or if he presses the aux button he gets no sound._

Then it ain't the TiVo. It's probably a loose SCART connector.


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## tefster

Interestingly enough the same thing happened to me last night, I lost 
sound on my Sky (SCART) channels and sound+picture on all of my RF
channels. Cables were all connected well, and I'd had no reboots inbetween.

I went out, came back and found that X-Men 2 had recorded without sound.
Viewing my Sky box directly I got sound, but when watching Live TV via the
TiVo and playing back the XM2 recording were both silent. Also I lost my RF
channels, TiVo couldn't pick up a signal from them at all.

In my case a full reboot sorted it.


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## Automan

My Sony Sky Digibox sometimes yields no sound if the same (current) channel number is selected too many times.

Normally however a change to another channel brings it back but it can lead to the odd silent recording.

Automan.


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## childe

Tefster

You say a full reboot fixed it. Do you mean a Restart or a Repeat Guided Setup? My Dad has tried the former with no success.

When you had no sound did you find that even if you pressed the aux button you still had no sound?


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## tefster

Sorry, my bad wording, I meant just a regular Restart. When I had no sound I
had no sound even if I pressed the Aux button.


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## ScoobyDooZ

Hi did you fix this as i'm having problems too:



ScoobyDooZ said:


> Can anyone help with the sound problem on my Thompson Tivo ?
> 
> Having come back from 2 weeks holiday I have found that programs recorded in the second week have no sound.
> 
> I also have no sound when watching live TV unless I push the Aux bypass button.
> 
> I have tried 2 freeview boxes and 2 scart leads. When connected direct to the TV they all work fine.
> 
> I have pushed the cables all the way in and give them a wiggle too.
> 
> I have also tried powering off and rebooting via the remote.
> 
> Can anybody suggest what to try next please ?
> 
> ScoobyDooZ
> 
> PS. Most of the above was tried after reading through alot of post. If it needs fixing can anyone recommend a place on the south coast (UK) as I have a lifetime subscription.


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## PeterDevonport

I've just encountered the same problem, I have a Thomson PVR10UK and a Thomson Sky digital box . 

I get sound through AUX and I get sound from old recordings in Now Playing.

I get no sound on new recordings in Now Playing or through Live TV.

All the leads are connected properly, and I've already reset the system.

Has anyone ever managed to fix this or is my TiVo dead?

Peter


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## blindlemon

It's not terminal, so don't panic 

This problem occurs when the MSP chip fails to initialise properly at startup. Nobody really knows why this happens, AFAIK, but I would suggest trying a couple more restarts from the System Reset menu.


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## PeterDevonport

Thanks for the info I'll go give it a try.


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## PeterDevonport

I've reset the recorder a few times now but still no sound on live tv. 
Any ideas???


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## ScoobyDooZ

I never sorted mine, but did read the other day that someone tried a reset without the freeview box plugged in and then plugged it in and it seemed to work.


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## blindlemon

OK, try unplugging it from the mains for a couple of minutes - a cold reset - and then see what happens.

Normally the failure to initialise the sound chip is a transitory thing. If that fails you could try replacing the PSU, as this _may _be voltage-related - although there's no guarantee it will do the trick.


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## healeydave

There are a few slightly differing "No Sound" issues floating around. I have had quite a few boxes from my stock over the years with this symptom, in fact its the most common fault second to modem issue probably!

I recently found I can cure some of these with some board re-work which I always try now when I come accross a unit with these symptoms. Generally from a cold start, the unit will show a picture but no sound, sometimes it takes a while for the picture to appears also or the picture is intermittant when doing channel changes.

I will consider looking at units for people whilst I'm still proving the fix. I can't make any guarentees because there are many differing causes for the "No Sound" problem and my cure probably ony addresses one or a few of them!

Postage being covered + a nominal charge for my time will only be required whilst I'm still looking into it if anyones interested.

Regs
Dave.


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## ScoobyDooZ

Hi, that's a kind jesture.

Where abouts in UK are you ?

Might be able to drop Tivo off !


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## healeydave

Worcester (Midlands)


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## ScoobyDooZ

Are you far from banbury ? sometimes I have to go there.


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## blindlemon

www.multimap.com


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## healeydave

ScoobyDooZ said:


> Are you far from banbury ? sometimes I have to go there.


With rings on your fingers and bells on your toes?

Sorry couldn't resist, and if some people don't know the rhyme, they will be wondering what the hell I'm talking about 

Although as the crow flies, Banbury isn't that far away, its just over an hour by Motorway


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## wytee

Hi All,

I'm a new UK Tivo owner - I recently bought one on eBay. I've just returned from living in the US for two years, so I had to give up a rather nice Series 2... but even the UK Series 1 is still miles better than Sky+ !!

Anyway, I've started having a similar sound problem and it's becoming increasingly common and annoying.

During the middle of a program, the sound will drop out and the picture wil start going "blocky" (intermittently). Sometimes, the sound does not completely drop out, but everyone sounds like a Dalek and the "blocky picture" problem is apparent. Connecting the Sky box directly to the TV proves that the Sky feed is fine.

Sometimes changing the channel fixes the problem (so the next program recorded will often be fine). But increasingly, I have to do a full reboot to resolve the problem. Currently I have to reboot about once a week, but like I say, it's getting more common that I have to reboot rather than just change the channel

If it makes any difference I upgraded the unit when I bought it to 250MB + Cachecard with 256MB (thanks to blindlemon)

Has anyone got any ideas?

One thought I had was to force the Tivo to reboot every day, say at 3am in the morning. Would this be easy to do?

Any ideas greatly appreciated!

Regards,

Martin


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## healeydave

When the problem starts, does it persist or clear itself?

I have seen units with cachecards installed corrupt when a call comes into a mobile!
and only clears when the call is ended or the phone goes to another room, very stange.

Also, how long does the unit work for before the corruption starts, if its days, I would be inclined to suspect the Hard Disk rather than a motherboard problem.
A motherboard problem might not start until a failing component gets hot, but this would be hours at the most and clearing the fault would require the unit to be left off (cold) for the fault to take a similar time to re-appear (again minutes or hours, not days).

I wouldn't try to circumvent the issue by rebooting the tivo regularly, if its the drive (most likely), it might be only a matter of time before the problem get worse!


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## blindlemon

I have to agree that it could well be a drive problem - most likely a few dodgy sectors that your TiVo hits from time to time. Unfortunately, even new drives that test perfectly sometimes develop these after a few months. In a PC it wouldn't be a serious problem, but the TiVo has no code to force the drive to reallocate bad sectors so they just hang around and keep causing problems 

Please contact me by email and I will arrange a replacement.


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## stevebax

Just had an occurence of this problem. Upgraded yesterday from original twin drive to single 200Gb + Cachecard. Also changed PSU for brand new one.

Sometime between 00:30 and 00:55 it stopped recording sound. Tried Restaring the Recorder (using the menu option). No joy. Pulled the plug for a hard reset which did the trick.


Here is the log after one of the soft resets.

Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Box setup for PAL mode 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Loading FPGA driver 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: fpga driver configured in PAL mode. 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: fpga module running SAA7118 video encoder 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: I2C arbitration error at address 0x88. 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) last message repeated 2 times
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: error reading MSP HW ver. 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: MajorRevCode Version 0x0 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: I2C arbitration error at address 0x88. 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: error reading ROM ver. 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: ROM Version 0x0 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: ProductCode = 0x0 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: *** Unknown MSP product!!! ***0x0 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: memstart = 0x80154000 : size = 0x120000 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Standin 0: addr 0x80158000, len 0x11c000 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Checking for Kickstart panic signal 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: No panic situation detected 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Cleanup /dev/hda9 pass 1 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/hda9 is mounted.^M 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: /dev/hda9 was not cleanly unmounted, check forced. 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Fix summary information? yes 



Here is extract from kernal log during the last hard reset.

Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Loading i2c driver 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Box setup for PAL mode 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Loading FPGA driver 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: fpga driver configured in PAL mode. 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: fpga module running SAA7118 video encoder 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: MajorRevCode Version 0x4 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: ROM Version 0xa25 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: ProductCode = 0xa 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: MSP3410 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: MSP34X0D 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: memstart = 0x80154000 : size = 0x120000 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Standin 0: addr 0x80158000, len 0x11c000 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Checking for Kickstart panic signal 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: No panic situation detected 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Cleanup /dev/hda9 pass 1 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/hda9 is mounted.^M 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: /dev/hda9 was not cleanly unmounted, check forced. 
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Fix summary information? yes 

If you compare you can see that it is having trouble with the MSP device (whatever that is).

I'm hoping this is a rare occurence - I'll post again if it repeats.


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## Automan

If you do a google search on msp error tivo others have had the same problem.

I myself have had this problem but have never checked the log at the time.

Searching on MSP comes up with

Multi Standard Sound Processors of the MSP-Family.

Which would indeed also point to the sound chip in Tivo which suits both US and UK TV systems.

This fault does seem to occur more often on Tivo boxes with added extras.

Automan.


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## Automan

http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheets_pdf/M/S/P/3/MSP3410D.shtml

Perhaps someone will figure out why we get this problem with this chip?

EDIT:
Reading the datasheet it is clear the chip handles and switches audio from tuner and scart.

I have found I can always restore audio to my three tivo by restarting with their digboxes switched off at the mains.

I am just curious if this problem only effects users with sky digboxes which do seem to have strange voltages floating around e.g. you can get a shock from them 

Automan.


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## healeydave

No, the Sound Problem has occured on my test bench with a Freeview setup.

I think all sound problems are related to the issues Nick @ Silicondust had.

The Tivo's MSP Sound Chip is really susceptible to minor fluctuations in the timing on the board and unfortunately the Tivo's Main board is really susceptible to fluctuations of component tolerances which cause these timing issues :-(

This goes for Un-modified and Modified Tivos but the extra drain on the Card-Bus when a Cachecard + Memory is added seems to still be a common factor but I think this only generally happens now if there is a weak point on the Tivo's main board that the extra drain emphasises. For example I have had a Tivo exhibit the No Sound problem as soon as I have added the memory to a cachecard and cured again with memory removal and it was a blantant as that, in and it didn't work, out and it did.


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## stevebax

My setup is a Freeview box (Sony VTX-D800U). So not related to Sky. Does this problem only occur on initialisation or can it manifest at any time?


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## Automan

Would it help to provide a seperate power supply for the disc/s or would that just be a waste of money / time?

Idea being to reduce load on intergrated power supply unit.

Automan.


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## healeydave

Well the Power Supply has been known to help the situation but the odds are rather low, we're talking probably a 15-20% chance that this alone will help!

if you have a new supply and there is no noise being produced (perhaps through drying out capicitors of an old supply), you can try tweeking the voltage pot up very slightly.

For example if you put a multi-meter across the +5v pins on the PSU connector (Red & Black), it will read probably read 4.99 to 5.01. You can tweek the pot to increase this to say 5.03 and see if it helps at all. 

!!! NOT RECOMMENDED UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR DOING !!!


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## wytee

Hi, I just wanted to update you all on how I was getting on with my no sound problem.

I removed the cachecard to no effect. I then noticed that the sound would drop out when I was using tivoweb, so I shut down the server process and it seems to have sorted out the problem to a certain extent. Previously, the sound was dropping out every day (accompanied by a blocky picture), requiring a full reboot. 

After stopping TW, it ran for about 3 weeks before I needed to reboot (but the problem is still there!)

I'm going to try putting in the original 40GB drive in to rule out a hard drive issue.

I'll let you know how I get on!

Cheers,

wytee


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## healeydave

Are you getting Sound Drop out or do you have a tivo that boots from cold with no sound and the only way to get the sound back is via a soft reset?

These are two different types of Sound issue, expecially if you are getting picture corruption too.

The Sound fault that is hardware related (MSP issues) usually results in no sound but a perfect picture on AV. Often no signal will be received on the RF. A soft reboot in the Tivo menus will often bring the sound back and the tivo will seem fine until a Cold start. On very rare occasions, the system will work from a cold start too.


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## DeadKenny

healeydave said:


> There are a few slightly differing "No Sound" issues floating around. I have had quite a few boxes from my stock over the years with this symptom, in fact its the most common fault second to modem issue probably!


Including the early boxes with the NICAM 'bug' where you'd get no sound decoded from NICAM over RF. My box has this bug, though TiVo did offer a fix but I never use the RF feed anyway.

Might be what's happening if people aren't getting sound from RF channels.


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## healeydave

The Nicam bug is a sound quality issue rather than no sound at all (cracking & popping).

If you have no sound at all on your RF only, thats different again.

I have had to repair a few units where Tivo have bodged the Nicam fix, but I can't remember if the symptoms were no sound on the RF only or not. If you havent had you unit from new, theres a possability that you have a Nicam bodge but then again if you don't use the tuner, its doubt you not too worried!


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## blindlemon

healeydave said:


> The Sound fault that is hardware related (MSP issues) usually results in no sound but a perfect picture on AV. Often no signal will be received on the RF. A soft reboot in the Tivo menus will often bring the sound back and the tivo will seem fine until a Cold start. On very rare occasions, the system will work from a cold start too.


To add to this, I have seen a few machines where the sound will only be missing occasionally (say, around 20% of the time) after a cold restart - and on one or two where this happens even with just a standard 40GB drive and no cachecard fitted.

Does anybody know where exactly in rc.sysinit the sound chip gets initialised, and how? The errors in the log often seem to be associated with an error from the I2C inteface (as used by iicset/iicsetw) when reading the version information from the sound chip. We know that reading values via I2C seems to be more problematic than writing them - hence the development of iicsetw which does no reads. Maybe if we could find what is reading the chip via I2C - and whether it really needs to - then we could make a modified version of that code which would reduce the frequency of this problem...


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## DeadKenny

healeydave said:


> The Nicam bug is a sound quality issue rather than no sound at all (cracking & popping).
> 
> If you have no sound at all on your RF only, thats different again.
> 
> I have had to repair a few units where Tivo have bodged the Nicam fix, but I can't remember if the symptoms were no sound on the RF only or not. If you havent had you unit from new, theres a possability that you have a Nicam bodge but then again if you don't use the tuner, its doubt you not too worried!


It was new from Dixons under the old £99 offer. I have to admit I've not tried the RF in ages, it just never worked from the start. I just thought from the postings back then that I had the NICAM bug especially given the model I've got.


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## MikeMcr

My TiVo has a CacheCard but has never had this sound problem until I replaced the 2 hard disks for a single one. Now there is no sound from a _cold _ start; happens every time. Only way to fix it is a soft reboot from the TiVo menu. I even replaced the power supply but it made no difference.

The power went off briefly the other day and I returned to find I had a whole bunch of recordings with no sound; annoying!


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## MikeMcr

blindlemon said:


> The errors in the log often seem to be associated with an error from the I2C inteface (as used by iicset/iicsetw) when reading the version information from the sound chip.


Does the same error get logged every time when the sound fails to initialise? Is it possible to write a script to scan the startup log and reboot the TiVo if it sees the error? It would have to be clever enough not to get into an infinite loop; like log the last time it forced a reboot and not to repeat more than x times in a set period of time.


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## healeydave

Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, I have an experimental fix in the offing.
I'd be willing to try and fix this for you relatively cheaply as a test case.

I guess I'd be looking at around £20 + shipping to cover my expenses (which is mainly time). If you deem its worth it let me know.

This would be an attempt to cure the hardware fault (not a hack with software) by the way. 

Regs
Dave.


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## ...coolstream

I am noticing that if I put the system in standby and later start it up again with the Live button, I often get no sound from the Tivo.

I tried to recover by switching from Aux to VCR and back again with some success, but now seem to have found that changeing channels from the Tivo will bring sound back immediately.

To be honest, all my recordings have sound, so I am presuming that the 'no sound' issue is related to output and not input


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## healeydave

Yes, this is a different issue to the one mentioned previously. The only way to get the sound back from the MSP / Timing problem is to do a soft reboot or very rarely it will work from a cold start but probably like only 1 in 20 times perhaps.


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## MikeMcr

...coolstream said:


> To be honest, all my recordings have sound, so I am presuming that the 'no sound' issue is related to output and not input


No, that is not the case; my recordings had no sound. The recordings before the cold start and after the warm start were fine. Just the ones made in the middle of that period had no sound.

healeydave, thank you for the offer. However, I will see how I get on. I have lived with this for a while now and it's not often the power goes off. The thought of life without TiVo, even for only a very short period of time, is not a pleasant one!


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## blindlemon

MikeMcr said:


> The power went off briefly the other day and I returned to find I had a whole bunch of recordings with no sound; annoying!


Time to invest in a UPS perhaps?



MikeMcr said:


> Is it possible to write a script to scan the startup log and reboot the TiVo if it sees the error? It would have to be clever enough not to get into an infinite loop; like log the last time it forced a reboot and not to repeat more than x times in a set period of time.


Have a look at checksetrgb.sh here as an example of how to force a set number of reboots. This was useful for a while prior to the introduction of iicsetw but is pretty much redundant now. You will also need to delete/truncate/rename the kernel log when you reboot, otherwise your script will just find the MSP error from last time around!


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## ...coolstream

healeydave said:


> Yes, this is a different issue to the one mentioned previously.


My mistake 



MikeMcr said:


> No, that is not the case; my recordings had no sound. The recordings before the cold start and after the warm start were fine. Just the ones made in the middle of that period had no sound.


Would this be why my recordings have retained sound whilst yours haven't?


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## RichardJH

> originally posted by *Blindlemon*
> Have a look at checksetrgb.sh here as an example of how to force a set number of reboots. This was useful for a while prior to the introduction of iicsetw but is pretty much redundant now.


does this mean I have no need to keep rgbset on my Tivo or in the sysinit.author file


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## blindlemon

You still need to run iicsetw to change the RGB settings, but as iicsetw doesn't seem to crash the TiVo like iicset used to, you can probably ditch the rest of the gubbins now if you like.


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## RichardJH

I am running your checkset and setrgb files from sysinit author what do I need to do to change my setup to run the newer iicsetw


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## Paul Stimpson

Hi,

@leighv> If you are getting no sound at all have you checked to make sure no silly person has got hold of the STB's remote and turned down or muted the audio on the STB?

@wytee> Assuming the corruption is down to the drive and not bad signal on the STB you could try this... Keep watching live TV in real time (preferably on a channel with short programmes) until you see the programme take a hit. When you see a hit press the record key and tell TiVo you want to save the whole programme at best quality. When it's finished recording go into Now Playing and set the programme to "save until I delete." If you have bad sectors and you get a glitch in live TV then you probably have at least some of them in the live buffer. I think saving the current programme in best will make that part of the drive into a programme in now playing and if it's never deleted it will stop the bad bit of the drive being released for use again.

Cheers,
Paul.


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## blindlemon

RichardJH said:


> I am running your checkset and setrgb files from sysinit author what do I need to do to change my setup to run the newer iicsetw


You can leave the scripts unchanged if you like as there's no downside AFAIK - and if iicsetw ever does hang your TiVo they may still recover it.

Just edit setrgb.sh with joe and change iicset to iicsetw. Oh, and FTP iicsetw to /var/hack/bin and 'chmod 755' it to make it executable too


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## jdwood37

healeydave said:


> Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, I have an experimental fix in the offing.
> I'd be willing to try and fix this for you relatively cheaply as a test case.
> 
> I guess I'd be looking at around £20 + shipping to cover my expenses (which is mainly time). If you deem its worth it let me know.
> 
> This would be an attempt to cure the hardware fault (not a hack with software) by the way.
> 
> Regs
> Dave.


Any idea why one hard disk would cause this and another not? Maxtor 300GB & Samsung 160GB were ok but not Seagate 300GB (1st with this problem) Do you think the cause is related to power output (mine is replaced, no change) at startup?


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## healeydave

That just goes to show how tempromental the main board can be.

It sounds daft, but the only conclusion I can come to in this situation is the effect the other two drives configuration is having on the PSU is more suitable to the working condition of your main board compared to the other drive.

I have seen rare cases where twin drives work ok but a single drive threw out the problem.
Generally the drives are irrelevant but when we are talking about a slight in-balance of the board timing, anything that has an effect indirectly like the drives connected to the same power supply that feeds the board can sometimes plug the hole even though they are nothing to do with the problem persay.

A cachecard being fitted to the expansion bus has another outside infuence and again another ball game with certain memory sticks added to the cachecard !


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## jdwood37

I tried the hard disk powered separately by a PC PSU---still the same result
So does this mean the noise is generated from the IDE?


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## healeydave

Interesting......

ok, here's another scenario to try:

Try connecting the Seagate to the seperate PSU but leaving it as the tivo boot drive again(connected to the tivo IDE) and leave the Maxtor connected to the tivo PSU but not connected to the tivo IDE of-course.

Just to see if the interferrence is coming through the tivo IDE as you suggest or if its the effect the Maxtor is having on the tivo PSU thats settling things down.


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## vega

I have been reading this and other related threads, and am ready to start experimenting with my US SA S1 Tivo. Before I begin, I would like to know where I can get the iicdump binary, as tridge's site is down. I need this to find the default settings in case I have to start over. I realize that a reboot will restore the defaults, but it can be done faster from the bash prompt with a simple script.

thanks in advance.


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## vega

in case anyone else is looking for the iic binaries,


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## lor

I had this problem when I changed my HDD to one supplied via Tivo Heaven. Started the Tivo up but no sound. Tried a couple of restarts but it did not help so then went into the audio menu where you select Nicam sound. Changed the setting, saved it then went back in and changed it back to Nicam then restarted. Sound came on straight away and never had the problem since.
Chris


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## blindlemon

Interesting - I've not heard of that before. 

The "nicam stereo"/"mono" setting doesn't seem to have any effect on SCART scources anyway (stands to reason as Nicam is only available via RF) so maybe setting this to "mono" would alter the initialisation of the sound chip in such a way that this problem was reduced? 

Not easy to test though as it's normally an intermittent pronblem anyway...


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## Automan

Yes all three of my Tivo's since fitting new hard drives and cachecards nearly always start first time with no sound.
At first I thought I'd cracked it because cold booting with their STB's unplug form the mains (no input on aux scart) seemed to always work.

Later I found this was not always the case and as instructed tried a soft reboot which worked.

The "bug" does seem to be quite tricky to track down and identify other than its always the chip which is an electronic RGB video and audio switch that fails to initalize for whatever reason.

Perhaps a nice tantalum capacitor soldered to the motherboard near the chip on its power supply would help (or maybe it already has one but is getting old and thus no longer as effective) ?

Automan.


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## TrainManG

healeydave said:


> The Tivo's MSP Sound Chip is really susceptible to minor fluctuations in the timing on the board and unfortunately the Tivo's Main board is really susceptible to fluctuations of component tolerances which cause these timing issues :-(
> 
> This goes for Un-modified and Modified Tivos but the extra drain on the Card-Bus when a Cachecard + Memory is added seems to still be a common factor but I think this only generally happens now if there is a weak point on the Tivo's main board that the extra drain emphasises. For example I have had a Tivo exhibit the No Sound problem as soon as I have added the memory to a cachecard and cured again with memory removal and it was a blantant as that, in and it didn't work, out and it did.


I've noticed over the last few months that the units I've had with this problem all seem to have had Hitachi DeskStar drives fitted as upgrades.

The last one I repaired, yesterday, needed a new power supply - usually the first thing I change - this cured the problem, instantly.

The only thing I could find was when the old PSU was in the +5v rail dropped by .37v. The new one only dropped by .14v. Enough to let the MSP chip lock up.

Tried it with Quantum and Maxtor drives and the voltage drop was less than .1v in both cases.

I know TiVoLand used to use Hitachi drives, and this latest machine was fitted with one - could this be a pointer to the overall problem.

BTW, absolutely NO reflection on TiVoLand, who have always delivered excellent service. Just another peculiarity of these excellent machines!!


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## TrainManG

Just to add that, checking my repair logs, the units I have worked on with 'DeskStars' have shown more HDD faults than units fitted with other drive makes. May be a coincidence?


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## mikerr

You might want to check out my hack that does a soft reboot if tivo starts without sound:

no sound hack

..though most often a new PSU fixes it.


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## nblount

I am aware this is an old thread now but I have had my tivo for 5+ years and never had a sound problem then recently one of my dual Samsung Spinpoint 160Gb drives had a failure (disk A) which ment I needed to rebuild so I purchased a single Hitachi 500Gb IDE drive, this caused my PSU to whine and sound to disappear so I replace it but I still get the sound disappearing on cold start and sometimes even on a reboot. I have implemented the nosound.tcl to reboot until it gets the MSP to initialize and so far this has sorted it but I am wondering if the Hitachi drive is actually causing the issue and if going back to Samsung Spinpoints may be the best solution or is it just using large single drives that cause the issue?


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