Philips TV Adapter audio out of sync with TV audio

Hearing Aids
#1

I started using the Philips TV Adapter with my hearlink 9040’s. I find the audio in my hearing aids is slightly ahead of the audio coming from my speakers. It’s not so bad when it’s just taking, but music is very noticable and quite annoying if the TV is loud enough I can hear both.

TV Adapter is using optical out
Sound bar is using HDMI ARC

I’ve played with the digital out delay and the digital output audio format is set to PCM but I’m not noticing much of a difference.

Looking for suggestions to get the audio outs better synced.

#2

If the speaker sound comes out after the TV Adapter sound, then the latency is coming from the soundbar, assuming that the optical out from the TV has no latency compared to the HDMI ARC.

It’s also possible that the TV is causing the latency between optical out and the HDMI audio itself, and the soundbar is not the culprit. In this case, you might want to see if there’s any option in the TV to delay the audio coming out of the HDMI audio or not.

Which one does the lip syncing match to better? The soundbar speakers, or your hearing aids? If it sync to the hearing aids better, then it’s either the HDMI latency to the soundbar, or it’s the latency by the soundbar in processing the HDMI audio. The video can be slightly out of sync with the audio and be acceptable, but any noticeable latency between 2 audio sources is annoying and hard to live with.

There’s really nothing you can do on the TV Adapter side because apparently it’s not the side that causes the latency. If your soundbar has some kind of audio output, like an optical out, or a headphones analog audio out, then you can use that to drive your TV Adapter. Hopefully the soundbar sends synchronized audio to the speakers and its headphones or analog audio out, in which your issue is solved. It’s not optical quality, but I doubt that the difference is really noticeable between the audio in and the optical in of the TV Adapter anyway.

You can also try to take the headphones audio out from your TV instead of the soundbar, but most likely if it’s the soundbar that’s causing the latency, then the headphones audio out from the TV is probably just as fast as the optical out from the TV, with no latency. But it doesn’t hurt to try.

If none of the above works, you can also buy a third party box from Amazon that takes the HDMI ARC from your TV and splits it out to optical or analog audio and also routes the HDMI audio through as well. From here, you send optical or analog audio to the TV Adapter, and the HDMI audio to the soundbar. But this only helps if it’s the TV that is causing the latency, which you resolve by using only 1 source from the TV and splitting it out into multiple sources in different formats. But if it’s the soundbar that’s causing the latency, then this solution wouldn’t help though.

2 Likes
#3

I did manage to find a delay adjustment on the sound bar and was able to adjust accordingly. However, every time it power cycles, I need to readjust. Like I said it’s only when the TV is loud enough I can hear both, which isn’t often hence the need for the adapter in the first place!

Both are very close to synced with the video, it’s close enough that visually I can’t tell the difference.

I will try an output from the sound bar to the TV adapter, I will also try routing the optical out of the adapter to the optical in of the sound bar and see if that does anything. I suspect not on the second option since the delay is in the processing at the sound bar.

#4

It depends. If your audio content is simple Dolby or DTS that the optical connection can handle, then perhaps it wouldn’t take very long for the soundbar to process and cause the kind of latency that you’re seeing anymore. But if your audio content is Dolby Atmos chocked full of multiple channel surround sound content that the optical connection can’t handle anyway, but which your soundbar can support, then downgrading the soundbar input from a Dolby Atmos experience to a regular Dolby experience may be a step down for how your soundbar will sound.

You just need to experiment and see. It may sound different if you have a high end soundbar that have directional speakers shooting sound up and down and to the sides for the 3D audio experience. But if it’s a simple soundbar with center/left/right speakers, even if the Dolby Atmos content comes in and can be processed by the soundbar, it’ll just be dummified down to 3 channels anyway not very different than what the optical data can carry.