"Robot Audio" Anyone having this problem?

Not sure if you read my post in the other thread so I'll give you my spin. The problem is with both the tv and the cable provider. My setup is the same as yours except I have the 37". I was getting the robot sound on digital (qam) channels regularly. My son has a Sharp 37" Aquos with a qam tuner. He lives with me and hooked up with cable box. We swapped tv's. He hooked mine up to his cable box and I hooked up his directly to the wall (from same outlet samsung was on). From this moment on, no robot sound on either set. We did this for about a week and then swapped again and boom back to robot sound. My conclusion is that Comcast is compressing signal too much and repeating it. The samsung's qam tuner can't handle it while the sharp's can. Samsung sent a field engineer to my house and he replaced the circuit board which had a much newer firmware on it (1015.0). This fixed my problem. When I called samsung, I had no problem with them when I told them essentially what I've just told you (about the tv swap and not that I suspected comcast too). I would call samsung and ask for the 1015 upgrade. They must have it somewhere that you can download and try.

I get robot audio OTA. My cable provider dropped the NBC QAM channel during the olympics, so I had to go OTA to catch the olympics in HD. I still got the robot audio and there was nothing plugged into the TV coming from the cable co.

So I don't necessarily disagree with your premise but I think a similar situation can occur OTA. Maybe getting a weak signal OTA has the same effect as an over-compressed signal from the cable co with QAM.

Regardles... if other TVs can handle it, this TV should also.

I just got my TV fixed from a Samsung rep. He swapped out the main board. It's using an older version of the firmware (1012.1). It's only been about 2 hours, but so far so good.

I have the LN32A450 with the same intermittent robot audio only on hd channels with comcast coming direct from the wall. comcast said "TV" samsung said "comcast" and that I might be able to solve it by getting a cable box.

i am not sure why people are getting their boards replaced in order to get updated firmware, unless some of these tv's dont have usb ports.

i upgraded the firmware via usbstick from 1011 to 1013. problem fixed, at least so far. dload updated firmware from the samsung support website. easy, and hopefully will solve the problem.

good luck

That worked for me for about a week. I think it was a fluke that the firmware update worked for me for only a week. Give it some more time to see if it stays fixed for you.

so i had to unplug the tv and when i plugged it back in, the problem came immediately back. rescanned and stored the channels, no luck. now why would unplugging the tv cause the problem to return? firmware still says it is updated, and cant try to update again unless samsung posts a newer update.

there must be something in the update process, besides the actual firmware itself, that kicked the tv into behaving.

hmm... i will let you know if i discover anything, anybody have any ideas?
thanks

I've experienced the joy that is "robot audio" on two LN32A450s. Both of which were using Comcast cable hookup direct to the tv (no cable box).

Problem used to occur on only HD stations, but has now shown up on non-HD digital stations too. The dreaded robot audio issue seldom goes away on its own, so I'm usually forced to switch channels to clear it.

Much like with Etrnaly's firmware report, the problem seemed to have gone away for roughly 4-5 days after updating to v1013. however after the few days had passed it came back with a vengeance. Always replacing any punchline/important dialogue moment with garbled droid noises.

Yar!

I had this same identical problem. Get a voice recorder or the like and record the robot noise. Then call Samsung. They may insist it's comcast's fault. If they do, tell them it doesn't happen on other TV's that you've tried. They should send out a repair person. They fixed mine the first time with a new board. See my previous posts for the details. It's been well over a month and still no more dreaded robot noise.

I've had the tv a few weeks and also experienced the robot audio. At the time, it occurred on 1 hd channel only and disappeared after changing channels. I have WOW cable service and am using QAM on the tv.

I'll have to experience it a few more times before I attempt to problem solve, I think.

I've had my LN32A450 for about a month and have never experienced robot audio. I'm using DirecTV with a non-HD receiver, and the ASTC tuner for OTA HD.


-- Rob

HAD the robot effect surface once in a while with my LN32A450, always WAS when watching HD via comcast direct to the TV...since the FW upgrade, its NEVER happened again, not once. =)

an update on this problem for me:

had comcast out first to make sure the signal and everything was fine, it was, and quite a strong signal apparently. the guy showed me how to log into the cable router to check the signal strength there, as the signal strength bars in the tv's menu are not very accurate. have watched these numbers when the audio goes bad, and they have never changed, so i strongly doubt it is a comcast signal problem.

as i said in an earlier post, when i upgraded the firmware the problem went away for a few weeks until i unplugged the tv. then the problem returned immediately after plugging it in again. you cannot upgrade the firmware again unless there is a newer version, so i just rescanned the channels which did nothing. what i did not do is a factory reset, which the tv did when I had upgraded the firmware.

i have now tried a factory reset (hold the exit key down for 10 seconds), then rescan channels and reconfigure all your picture settings. i have not had the problem since.

FACTORY RESET AND DONT UNPLUG THE TV, is the solution I am going with. if the problem comes back, i will get samsung out to replace the board, as i dont want to have to keep resetting the darn thing. what i would like to know is if someone with a replaced board has unplugged their tv and plugged it back in without any issues, as i am sure after replacing the board, the samsung tech reset the tv...

does anyone with this problem have or have had problems with digital audio through HTMI or other sources? only reason i ask is that i dont have any other sources of digital audio...

delineator - that's kind of interesting. I have a real hard time believing that the source of this problem is unplugging the tv but I guess stranger things have happened. I was unplugging my tv a lot over the summer (thunderstorms). I might try the reset to try and backup your assertion. I hate going through all that crap but I guess it's worth a shot. Wow, that would be bizarre. But still... the tv is several hundred $$... this shouldn't be happening.

By the way, how long has it been since your last, uhh... unplug?

here is another interesting tidbit that I am realizing in retrospect. i believe that the audio would fix itself if it was "robotic" during a program and then it went to commercial, so a brief break in transmition would fix it, much like changing the channel fixes it. i cannot recall it ever happening during a comercial, so perhaps it took a long continues stretch of uninturupted audio to bring out the problem. hmmm... no idea why a reset would cause this to behave, however...

hitting the mute button then hitting it again does not fix the problem as that is probably between the processor and the speakers, and does not interupt the stream to the processor.

here is the timeline of my problem:

problem started (or was always present since purchase), digital audio would break up every 5-10 minutes for 10-30 seconds, slight pause of no sound, then sound was fine. repeat. happened ALL the time, with the occational maybe hour or so not happening.

did firmware upgrade which involved automatic factory reset

zero problems for 2 to 3 weeks until i unplugged the set.

plugged set back in, and back to original story immediately. this continued for a week or so while i didnt bother trying to do anything.

did a factory reset.

zerop problems immediately, but so far only a couple days in.

Doesn't make any sense, but hopefully you're on to something. Keep us posted.

I bought my LN32A450, set it up and had no problems for over a month. Then the Olympics started, and the HD robot effect kicked in just as described - every 5 to 10 minutes, lasted for a few seconds, then self corrected after a very brief break in the sound. BTW I am on Comcast with a direct cable connection, and I have a Pioneer HDTV that has never had this problem.

After a visit by Comcast to check the signal, which was just fine, I started searching on-line for a solution. I found the CNET Samsung forum where many others were reporting the same problem. Anyway, to make a long story a little shorter, I upgraded my firmware to version 1013, and the problem went away for about 2 weeks. So, I called Samsung's 800 number, they assigned a local repair shop to help me, and the main board was replaced, all within a week. Amazing service. So, it has now been 6 weeks, and my set still works perfectly. I checked, and the new board has the same old 1013 firmware, so the problem was not in the firmware.

Since I was prepared for the fact that I would have to redo all of my settings and channels, I took pictures of each of the many setup screens before the swap. Sure beat trying to write all of the settings down by hand.

in response to the above post, i went and found the CNET forum, it has 50 posts on it, with some involvement by a Samsung rep of some kind, lots of people trying lots of different things, some getting understandably frustrated and really trying to push Samsung for a solution. Nothing concrete yet, but worth keeping an eye on that forum as well.

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-13973_10...rum-w;forums06

posts 39 and 40 also refer to power being disconnected from the tv and then the problem starting.

a few posts about boards being replaced or firmware updates or resets temporarily solving the problem. no way to know if anyone has perminently solved the problem, as none of these sets are all that old. i am 1 week in from reset and no problems yet. i do have all my fingers and toes crossed however, which makes it hard to type posts in the forums...

keep your eyes out for a further firmware update, I would think they could sort it out purely through firmware.

http://www.samsung.com/us/support/do...sp_nm=LN32A450

I am personally going to wait and see what happens, still seems a crap shoot if replacing the board fixes the problem, so I dont want to deal with that hassle yet. If I am able to get a couple weeks or longer before it happens, then have to do a reset in order to get another couple of weeks, i can deal with it for a while (especially if i take pics of the setup screens as SLRoberts42 has suggested, good idea.)

We are having the exact same "robot" sound problem with our new Samsung LN32A330 LCD TV. We bought it in September from Best Buy and noticed the sound was starting to go in and out and getting robotic at random intervals on the HD channels after a few weeks. We thought it was a cable problem at first. We have Comcast, but do not have a cable box because we do not subscribe to premium channels and do not want to pay the extra cost for it each month.

We also have the same TV, only smaller (26", model LN26A330 ) in the bedroom and this TV has no sound problems at all and works perfectly. We switched out the TVs to see if it was a problem with the wiring in the walls or the cables, but, lo and behold, the 32" had the same EXACT robotic sound problem and the 26" was just fine. It is obviously the TV.

Finally, Samsung sent out a repairman who replaced the entire circuit board. It was fine for a few days, but now it's doing the exact same thing again. In fact, it seems even worse than before. What is going on?

This is ridiculous and inexcusable. Why isn't Samsung doing anything to solve this problem if so many people are having the same issue? We just want this issue fixed. If they can't do it, we just want our money back!

Well, this is interesting. After a factory reset I watched about two hours of HD broadcasts with not a trace of audio problems. Hardly conclusive of course, but it's a start.

I did a reset last week and mine has been fine since then. I want to test the "unplug" theory but I don't want to have to reset again and redo all the settings.

still going strong. no problems yet. I am reluctant to fully test my theory by unplugging the set, however.

i have asked someone on the other forum who has 2 of these tv's to put them side by side and on the same HD channel and see if they exibit robot audio at exactly the same time. if they do, then it is some particular part of the comcast broadcast that only these tvs cannot handle, if they do it at different times, then it is some problem with the tv's ability to decode audio over time.

i will post the results here when i see them there, not that knowing this really changes anything or brings us to a solution...

After I upgraded my firmware, it stopped the robot audio for about a week. When it came back, it was actually right after we had a power glitch where everything turned off for about a second. I've since had my board replaced and haven't seen the problem again. It's been about a month since it was replaced.

Just an update. My board was replaced on Sept 12th and everything is still ok. Firmware 1015.0

have either of you unplugged or lost power to the tv since replacing the board? i won't ask you to unplug it unless you want to take the risk of it coming back and having to reset the tv.

did you have to rescan the channels after the new board was put in? if so, then they must have done a factory reset on the tv after the board went in.

i am wondering if it is the new board that solved it, or the factory reset that probably happened when they installed the new board.

of course, if your not having problems anymore, you may not still be following this thread, thanks.

I have not unplugged set since new board. However, we've had a power outage so that should count as unplugged. When the board is changed, you are back to square one (rescan). There are only two boards in the TV, one is the power supply and the other is for the rest of the TV. The board can be replaced in 10 minutes or under, it's that simple.

For those that have robot audio issues, what is your signal strength on the problem channels?

I normally use cable, and have only occasionally heard it. When I did some antenna testing once, one channel with a very weak signal (0-1 bars) had alot of robot audio issues.