DD DTS passthrough crackling noise in left speaker

Help and Support Vero 4K / Vero 4K +
1

Have been enjoying my vero 4k+ a lot, however recently noticed crackling noises when playing movies. Had my vero 4k+ for over a year and only recently started noticing this.

setup
-Vero 4K+, HDMI to Samsung TV, optical cable to Marantz NR1504 receiver for audio (receiver does not support 4k passthrough to tv hence the two cables used.
-Marantz NR1504 supports DD and DTS, setup with two speakers only (2.0)
-My TV can only pass DD to the receiver. In Theory I could send audio via the TV but that would imply transcoding DTS to DD in order for my tv to pass it back to the receiver. As I have a DTS receiver my first attempt would be to try and fix this

issue
When playing movies I lately noticed a crackling noise on my left speaker only. It starts on playback and is not very loud, I can hear it only if the movie audio isn’t very loud. It is always there as long as playback is ongoing, and stops when I stop playback
-This only happens for DD/DTS movies. Just played a movie with AAC Stereo there is no crackling whatsoever. Same for playing MP3, the audio is fine
-This leads me to assume my cabling is fine (optical cable) and cables to my speakers
-Playing Netflix (app on tv, not via kodi) with DD also works fine so the setup is able to play DD without crackling. Ps4 also plays without noise.

Kodi Settings I recall setting this up using a guide here over a year ago
-Audio output device: AML-M8AUDIO, HDMI
-# of channels: 2.0
-Output config: Best match
-Volume control steps: 60
-Maintain original volume on downmix: on
-Stereo upmix: off
-Include LFE in stereo downmix: 0%
-Boost centre channel when downmixing: 0dB
-Resample quality: Medium
-Treshold for pitch correction: 2
-Keep audio device alive: 2 minutes
-send low volume noise: off
Gui
-Gui sounds: only when playback stopped
-Gui sounds: Kodi UI sounds
Audio passthrough
-Allow passthrough: on
-passthrough output device: (greyed out, same as above A)ML-M8AUDIO, HDMI
-DD (AC3) capable receiver: on
-Enable DD traanscoding: on
-DD plus capable receiver: off
-DTS capable receiver: on
-TrueHD capable receiver: off
-DTS-HD capable receiver: off

So struggling a bit on where to start troubleshooting. Happy to post a log ofcourse but not sure if that would help for crackling audio of if, based on the above, someone could suggest some steps to try and tackle this. It’s very possible I messed up a setting (e.g. don’t understand my output as it doesn’t list SPDIF but recall I had to make a change here as otherwise my tv also gets audio, sends it back to the receiver, overruling the optical lead going in there)

2

Do you have another optical cable you could try with?

Does playing at 1080p and sending sound via HDMI also cause the problem?

3

Thanks Sam. Tried another cable that didn’t solve it. Movies I tried are all 1080p. Tried audio via HDMI to tv to receiver (dolby only) and problem persisted.

Have been googling a lot. Looks like it may be the amplifier for certain formats only. Found other users with Marantz amplifiers getting crackling on the left front speaker. So for now I suspect the amp, not OSMC vero 4K+. Will google and test some more.

4

I had that in the past, a long time ago with an old amplifier.
It was not able to handle Dolby Ex - and didn’t know what to do about it. After talking to Kenwood about it, they mentionned that I could send in the Amplifier for them to replace the chip. It was a misinterpretation of the specs (which were not clear at the time I boughtnit) regarding Dolby Ex which caused the decoder chip to just playback the Dolby Ex embedded audio channels in the regular streams as if they were audio. I heard it in both left and right channels though.
Maybe it is something similar you have.

5

I have a NR1501 and NR1608 and haven’t heard of this problem (but I’m not going to look for it, just in case!)

As you are only listening in stereo can you try setting the vero to output PCM stereo?

6

Morning everyone, thanks for the suggestions. Late last night I found an option on my receiver called “pure direct” which disables certain processing within the amplifier and switches off the amplifier display “to minimize interference”. Noise completely disapeared after using that function. Safe to say it was my receiver then, probably getting old and starting to develop this issue. Thought I’d add this here and good to know the Vero is working 100%.

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