Playback Issues - Audio/Video & Power

[darylkulak]

I have had my Roku Ultra for more than a year.  It is working great with a Samsung TV and Auvio sound bar.  However, only certain channels can communicate with the Auvio sound bar.

Works with sound bar:      Netflix, Hulu, YouTube

Doesn't work:                     HBO MAX, Roku Channel

When I try to play a selection from the second group of channels, the sound bar gives a loud static sound and then occasional static after that.  Otherwise, silence.  The movie plays on video, but no sound.

I had this problem previously with a new Blu-Ray player I just bought a few months ago.  I was able to resolve it by changing the encoding type setting on the Blu-Ray.  I changed the Dolby Audio setting from Bitstream to PCM and the DTS/DTS-HD setting from PCM to Bitstream. Sound started working great through the sound bar.

Any ideas?  This seems so strange that different channels would use different encoding schemes.

[darylkulak · Accepted solution]

Dang!  I guess this community isn't very active.  Well, I figured it out for myself.  For people searching for this particular solution, I will post what I did.

As I stated, the HBOMAX channel was giving me static through my Auvio sound bar whenever I choose a movie or TV show there.  All other channels seemed to work fine for audio.

However, when I went into the Roku player with these menus:   Settings / Audio / HDMI and set it to PCM-Stereo.  This caused the HBOMAX channel to begin working for audio again.

That was it!  I hope this helps someone.  It was very frustrating for me, that's for sure.

P.S.  Don't bother trying to DM Roku Support on Twitter.  I think it is just a bot - zero help.

[JeremyRay]

Thank you!  No one thanks to Roku. It would be nice of they'd use some of their money for customer support. I'm watching HBO this second when I seen your post. I hope this works for my family too!  Great work my friend!

[darylkulak]

Okay, it looks like Roku updated their Settings menu and now my advice above is not up-to-date.  Here is what you should do instead:

On the Roku menu, go to Settings.

Choose Audio.

Go to Audio Mode. Choose Stereo (if you have Auto [DD, DTS] selected, that is the problem.)

That should do it. You are forcing the Roku to broadcast in plain-old stereo, rather than the fancier Dolby Digital or Digital Theater Sound.  Probably if you have an audio device that can handle those, you won't have this problem that I have with the Auvio Sound Bar. But for me, this is the **updated** version of what works.