sound distortion on new LN22A451

stevenjlutz,

It depends if the signal is the issue, and if so, will the new sound system and tuner will be able to do an equal or better job of processing the signal into sound.

With audio compression, and time compression on shows, it?s not hard to imagine that the audio signal that is being sent might not sync up perfectly with all tuners. Audio drop-out is the equivalent of static in analog signals. With digital, you either have sound or you don?t.

The cable and satellite boxes have a distinct advantage in that they have the ability to update and patch these very issues. If you?ve ever watched your cable box update, you?re seeing a transmitted firmware install itself to fix or prevent an issue in the event that the regular tuner?s parameters won?t accept a specific feed. That?s why cable and satellite boxes don?t have this problem. They can change the specifications and recover far more quickly than we can ? and without a service call.

The best way to get the picture from the provider onto your screen is with a cable or satellite box. Our tuners meet the quality and specifications required by the industry, but that can?t account for the changes or upgrades made by each individual content provider.

Regards,

Mr. Samsung

Thank you for the reply.

I have since updated my firmware to the most recent available and that seems to have helped. I am not the best case study as I do not watch much TV, but I was able to watch the entire VP debate in HD without sound distortion--that is 90 minutes, WAY longer than I had ever made it before.

I think for someone like myself who basically watches the occasional sports game in HD it is not worth the time or investment to pursue this further.

Thank you again for taking time to adress my question, Mr. Samsung.

Well, your problem must have been different than mine, because my TV is still working fine after over a week. The local repairman called me a few days after the repair and asked how things were going. Then he said that he would call me again at the end of the month just to make absolutely sure that everything was still OK. I didn't think that such service still existed.

did anyone fix this problem, it has been while sense anyone has posteed on here and i am thinking of getting this model

I am returning my TV. The problem could not be fixed. As far as I could tell,it is a problem in their hardware and all units have it.
Again, it only shows up when you connet directly to the cable TV input and not to the cable box.

As identified in many of the postings, with a direct connect to the cable provider(not a cable box), either CableVision or Comcast, the LN32A450 will not work properly(sound distortion) on the HD channels. It is a design problem in the tuner/firmware that has not been corrected. I have another brand LCD TV running in parellel to the Samsung and that TV works fine and the Samsung does not. My local Best Buy and PC Richards stores are also aware of this problem and now ask the customer what they are using before making a purchase suggestion.
I hope that this helps.
I am having a difficult time in getting a refund from Samsung, since this has been going on since late June when I installed the LCD TV.

Samsung told me that a technician in my area would call me this week to setup an appointment to fix my two tv's LN32A450 LCD. To date, no one has called me. I called Best Buy last week too and they said to call their corporate office to see if they could send one of their technicians to see if I could have a replacement. This is just getting so crazy and complicated and taking up all of my time. I love my Samsung TV with the exception of the sound problem. Why don't they just fix it or replace it? I just don't get it. You would think a reputable company would honor their customers complaints. Why would they want to hurt their reputation, especially at a time of economic recession? I'm going to call Samsung again and let them know that I'm going to write a complaint on the Better Business Bureau's website and have Consumer Reports check into this if they don't settle this soon. I'm tired and just want what I thought I paid for.

Your problem may be more the fault of the local repair service than with Samsung. After I called Samsung I got a call from a local repairman within a couple of hours, and my LN32A450 was repaired within a week of when I first called. Later I got follow up calls from both Samsung and the repairman, Tom's TV Service in Buzzards Bay, MA. I am baffled as to why people in other parts of the country seem to be having so much trouble.

is the issue fixed

You know Mr. Samsung, my guess is that your customer service most likely have received 5000 calls by now regarding the sound problem with $3000 tvs....so its high time that you stop lying and ask your bosses to FIX the issue or your company will be in some deep trouble when the word actually gets around and into the mainstream media!!!!!!

I purchased the LN46A630 on Black Friday. I have begun to notice this sound problem. It will happen out of the blue (sometimes during commercials) but yesterday it started happening when it went from a commercial over to a quick interlude to remind you that you were watching David Letterman right after a few more commercials. I have seen the problem go away on it's own when the show resumes from commercial. I can stop the problem by unplugging either the right or left component leads going into my receiver (so this must be caused by a sync problem between left and right speakers). The problem can also be solved by changing channels or going to menu and turning it to internal speakers and then back to external. The echo is very annoying. I called and reported this to Samsung and was asked to unplug it so that it would reset it. If that didn't fix it then I they could send out a tech. I just bought it, I don't want to repair it. I might return it and get a sony, but I really wanted this Samsung for the great picture quality, but I can't stand this echoing anymore.

I am another with the famed "robot audio" problem on my 37A450. It seems to have started after a Power Failure last month, and has been there ever since on all HD QAM channels. My other 32A450, just purchased, is OK -- so far.

I could not reflash the fw, since only 1013.3 seems to be available, and you can only go up or down, but not equal. But from other people's experience a reflash, with the obvious system reset, seems to work for awhile.

You said you located an older FW. I wonder if you can point me to where I might find Downlevel code. Your steps 6 - 7 seem perfectly logical, and worth trying.

I had the older one saved. I can email it to you if you want. Just give me your email. I am not sure of the legal implications of posting it onto a public web page.

As long as the firmware contains only-and-all of the original files, and wasn't backwards engineered (read: hacked), then I don't see why it can't be shared.

If you'd like to upload it somewhere and provide a link, I don't think I'll object. I don't have a better answer at this point, and if you have a probable hypothesis, let's go for it.

--HDTech

Thanks for the info. As soon as I figure out how to pass my email address to you -- we can move on. I just started on this forum today, and getting adjusted.

Sorry Reflash, but all attempts to deal with cross-emailing have failed. I guess the CNET sites are a special challenge. Perhaps HDTECH can access (and share) our addresses! Or provide a downlink pointer to ftp or other code sources. Thanks.

It has now been over a month since my repair, and my set is still working perfectly. There must be more than one problem, since so many people have not had any luck getting their problems fixed. Either that or there are a bunch of the bad boards in the repair pipeline.

I have summarized these issues together.

As soon as I hear something, I will let you know. I apologize for the delay on this, but I had a lot of information to compile, and new reports would invalidate previous reports, so I had to seperate issues accordingly.

I did bypass regular service, and escalated it, so hopefully we'll see something rather quickly.

Please know that I've been watching this thread very carefully, and will continue to support any incoming information.

--HDTech

I called samsung to fix my two tv's and I have been waiting for a repairman to call me for over a month now. After the first two weeks of not hearing from a repairman I called samsung to find out why. They told me that the fax they sent the repairman did not go through, so they sent another one. I called about two weeks later because the repairman still had not called to setup an appointment. Samsung told me to call the repairman which I did. I got an answering machine that said his office hours were from 3pm to 5pm. I called Samsung back last Wednesday and asked for another repairman. They said the new repairman would call me within 3 days. So far I have not received a call. It's been a week. I have two LN32A450 lcd tv's. I live in Illinois and the repairmen here are surely not as quick as what has been said here. I am on a business trip right now and will be back next week to call the repairman or samsung. Again, what an ordeal just to get what I paid for.

I have just found this forum from a post on the AVS forum mentioned above, I am the guy who posted the Factory Reset "solution" on that site.

dido325, you are in a unique position to add some valuable information to this topic, since you are the only one out there that has 2 of these tv's.

A simple way to prove to Samsung that it is definately a TV fault, and cannot possibly be the signal would be to have both your Samsungs connected and on the same HD channel. 2 possible results.

1) the tvs repeatedly have robot audio at the same time. If they do, then it is something in the broadcast (perhaps even just a glitch in the broadcast at that very moment that the samsungs cant deal with, but that other TVs can). In this case, Samsung needs to figure out what it is that Comcast is doing at those moments, and find a solution to deal with it.

2) If they do it at different times, then there are not an particular glitches in the Comcast signal and it would be a problem with the Samsungs ability to deal with a continues digital audio signal. the solution is however the same as for number 1) Samsung has to fix their tvs.

I would bet that they will distort at different times proving simply that the Samsungs cannot deal with a proven good digital audio signal the way that they should.

If you can easily test this and post the results, I think it would really add to the information available on this issue.

something to try after that is to factory reset only 1 of the TVs and then watch the same hd channel and see how that goes.

interested to see how this pans out.

I haven't heard back from the samsung repairman yet, so I called them, gave them my transaction numbers (for both tv's) my tv's are samsung LN32A450 models, and they told me that Samsung has never contacted them. Called samsung again and they said they did. Had the samsung customer rep call the repairman and keep me on hold. Guess what, the fax didn't go through (had the same problem with the first repairman). The reason: samsung had the wrong fax number for the repairman. Anyway the samsung rep was very apologetic and transfered me to the executive line (whatever that is). Spoke to a very nice woman who said this was unacceptable and past their one month repair guarantee. She suggested that I have both my tv's replaced (since they were both built in March 08 & sold to me in May 08 from the same store, Best Buy). Since there are two tv's with the same problem she is assuming a faulty board or something. Her replacement recommendation must go through two people who will review my case for approval (since both tv's have different transaction numbers and may be reviewed by different people, there is a chance that one will get approved and one won't). In this case she said she can resubmit to have the other one approved. It will take two days and then I am to call them on the status to see whether it was approved or not. Do you think maybe samsung has fixed this problem? She said they would replace my tv's with the same model type built on a later date.
In response to Delineator: Thanks, your idea is a good one and hopefully over the weekend I will try this and let you know.

My LN32A450 was built in June and bought in July, and it had the audio problem. My unit was fixed by replacing the so called audio board, and it has been working perfectly for almost 2 months. When he called to make an appointment, the local repairman asked for the version number that was on a label on the right side of the unit, SQ01 in my case. He said that he needed it to make sure that he got the right part. Since no one else in this forum has mentioned this issue, I would be interested to see if others have different version numbers, and if there is any correlation between that and the persistence of the problem.

Both my tv's are SQ01. I called Samsung today and they approved replacements for both my tv's (will replace with the same model type, just a newer production date). It should take a couple of weeks. I'll post what happens as I go along. Haven't done any of the delineator tests yet, but haven't forgotten you, hopefully by this weekend.

I tested both my tv's while watching the same HD channel. The robot audio happened at different times. An update to my tv saga. Samsung sent me two replacement tv's on Nov. 13th (same model LN32A450) with a manufacturing date of Oct. 2008. The tv's I replaced had a March 2008 date which I bought in May 2008. Anyway, all was good for 3 days. Today is the fourth day and guess what, yup, you probably guessed it....the HD audio problem is back again! My advice to anyone buying a new TV is to stay away from Samsung until they can fix this. Forget about a fix, it's in the parts and manufacturing and my guess is that there is more than one faulty part in these TV's. I am watching an HD channel right now and the sound problem is getting progressively worse as I type. The distortion is more frequent and lasting at least 30 to 40 seconds. Haven't watched the other tv as much, but I have no doubt that it too has the same audio problem. The only real decent thing for Samsung to do is to refund all of us.....but I doubt very much that they will. At this point I don't care about a fix....I just want to get rid of these TV's and buy a Sony!

In another thread, there is a discussion in using the little-known "Factory Reset" ability built in to the Remote. This uses the "Exit" button depressed for at least 10 seconds, then replying to the Reset? dialogue box. It worked for me, without having to do a Firmware update to accomplish the reset. On my 37A451CD with 1013 code. I wonder if others have tried this with similar results.
That other thread was:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1070848

I'll see how long this fix holds up.

Is this problem only related to Qam/Cable channels, or has it occured with
OTA signal using the antenna input as well? Also, what happens when using an external audio system?
Is the so-called "robot" audio heard there also or only in the TV's speakers?

So my tv worked great for about a week. But the same problem has started back. I"m going to try some other things such as resetting it using the "exit" button on the remote as recently suggested here, will keep you all posted on how that goes.

Hey everyone,

We are actually having the same distorted, "robot" sound with our new Samsung TV (LN32A330). We use Comcast without a cable box. The audio will get really robotic sounding after a few minutes on every HD channel, then it will correct itself, and then start again at random intervals. It was doing pretty badly today for over 2 minutes. It's extremely annoying.

We also have a smaller version of the TV we bought for the bedroom a few months ago (LN26A330) and it works without any problems. The sound is perfect. We actually switched out the TVs for a few days to make sure it wasn't a wiring problem in the wall and the 32" had the same sound problem while the 26" was just dandy.

We called Samsung and they were not at all understanding about the problem. They sent a repairman over who replaced the circuit board. We thought it solved the problem, but after a few days, the robotic sound was back and even worse than before. What is going on?

I've read through this thread and it seems like there are only temporary solutions to this problem. We want a permanent fix or a refund. Samsung is going to send yet ANOTHER repairman out, which I feel is a waste of time. They said they can't give a refund until they try to fix it 3 times. I posted my problem in another thread so hopefully people who have the same issue will come forward.

The problem is also reported here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1070848.

If anyone finds a permanent solution to this problem, please post. This is getting VERY old. If other brands work just fine with Comcast without a box, as well as the other Samsung TV we have, why is this one having such an issue?