Sony S350 volume too low?

[Cortiz]

I recently bought a second Blu-Ray player the Sony S350. I also own the Panny BD60.

I have the S350 connected directly to my Bravia LCD via HDMI. I've noticed the output volume from the S350 is very low. I played around with the DRC settings and got mixed results. For instance, a movie with DTS HD audio track the overall volume is fine but the dialog is almost impossible to hear. If you raised the voume too much then it becomes very loud. I read in the manual that DRC has no effect on DTS HD audio tracks. So that's that. Next I tried a movie with a legacy Dolby 5.1 audio track and the DRC set to Auto or Wide and the movie volume was so low that I had to raise the volume to 60's range just to hear a clear dialog. And again, when the action comes it becomes way too loud. If I set the DRC to TV mode, then the volume is fine but it will mess up the True HD audio tracks. The True HD audio becomes vey low and compress and you will need to raise the volume all the way up to the 60's or 70's. I was browsing the net and found out I'm not the only one complaining about the low volume output of the S350. Seems there's a lot of people out there not happy about this. I think it's kind of annoying to keep changing the DRC back and forth depending on what type of audio track a movie has. I have the Pansonic BD60 and it doesn't have this issue at all.

Is there's a way around this issue? If not, I guess I'll be returning this player.

Thanks!

[BADuHamel]

I recently bought a second Blu-Ray player the Sony S350. I also own the Panny BD60.

I have the S350 connected directly to my Bravia LCD via HDMI. I've noticed the output volume from the S350 is very low. I played around with the DRC settings and got mixed results. For instance, a movie with DTS HD audio track the overall volume is fine but the dialog is almost impossible to hear. If you raised the voume too much then it becomes very loud. I read in the manual that DRC has no effect on DTS HD audio tracks. So that's that. Next I tried a movie with a legacy Dolby 5.1 audio track and the DRC set to Auto or Wide and the movie volume was so low that I had to raise the volume to 60's range just to hear a clear dialog. And again, when the action comes it becomes way too loud. If I set the DRC to TV mode, then the volume is fine but it will mess up the True HD audio tracks. The True HD audio becomes vey low and compress and you will need to raise the volume all the way up to the 60's or 70's. I was browsing the net and found out I'm not the only one complaining about the low volume output of the S350. Seems there's a lot of people out there not happy about this. I think it's kind of annoying to keep changing the DRC back and forth depending on what type of audio track a movie has. I have the Pansonic BD60 and it doesn't have this issue at all.

Is there's a way around this issue? If not, I guess I'll be returning this player.

Thanks!

Hmm,

I have an S350, but I've never had it running audio directly into a display. The first thing I would ask you is, are there any sort of audio settings on the display itself that may be causing this? Does your display have its own DRC settings that could be adding more DRC on top of what's coming out of the S350? DRC would obviously have no effect on any DTS programming because it is not supported in the DTS specification. Have you tried any setting other than "Auto" or "Wide" for DRC? If not, maybe try the "Standard" or "TV Mode" settings and see how they sound?

Have you tried switiching the HDMI Audio between "Auto" and "2-ch PCM" and seeing what happens?

If none of those things work, another thing you could try is connecting the stereo RCA analogue audio outputs to the display instead and seeing what happens. You would have to set the "Audio Priority" under the "Audio Settings" menu to "Stereo Analog" if you were to try that scenario. You may then have to adjust the audio attenuation in the "Audio Att" Aduio settings menu; it's a simple on/off setting.

Try these things if you haven't already and let us know how it goes.

[Cortiz]

Hmm,

I have an S350, but I've never had it running audio directly into a display. The first thing I would ask you is, are there any sort of audio settings on the display itself that may be causing this? Does your display have its own DRC settings that could be adding more DRC on top of what's coming out of the S350? DRC would obviously have no effect on any DTS programming because it is not supported in the DTS specification. Have you tried any setting other than "Auto" or "Wide" for DRC? If not, maybe try the "Standard" or "TV Mode" settings and see how they sound?

Have you tried switiching the HDMI Audio between "Auto" and "2-ch PCM" and seeing what happens?

If none of those things work, another thing you could try is connecting the stereo RCA analogue audio outputs to the display instead and seeing what happens. You would have to set the "Audio Priority" under the "Audio Settings" menu to "Stereo Analog" if you were to try that scenario. You may then have to adjust the audio attenuation in the "Audio Att" Aduio settings menu; it's a simple on/off setting.

Try these things if you haven't already and let us know how it goes.

Thanks for the suggestions. Yes, I have tried everything you said with no luck so far. I think it's just how the player is design I guess.

Thanks!

[BADuHamel]

Thanks for the suggestions. Yes, I have tried everything you said with no luck so far. I think it's just how the player is design I guess.

Thanks!

Are you running the very latest firmware? And, lastly, have you tried perhaps, contacting Sony's customer service about this issue as a last resort?

I don't have the player hooked up at the moment, so I'm not sure what the latest firmware is off the top of my head, but you can find it here: Sony eSupport - BDP-S350 - Software Updates & Drivers

If you have your player hooked up to the internet via an Ethernet broadband connection you can, of course, download it directly from the player.