Quote:
Originally Posted by
fitz0527 
But I believe others have said that connecting directly to a DVR or to your other electronic device produces better sound quality than connecting it just to your TV.
There's a reason for that.
This soundbar accepts Dolby Digital and DTS bitstreams and processes them internally. As I understand it, it will not even attempt its "Virtual Surround" imaging otherwise. While the HW-C450 is
physically a 2.1 system, when a DVR/BD player/console/whatever is connected via optical it can utilize all the information from a 5.1 stream. If you hook up said devices to a TV (via HDMI or otherwise) and route the sound from the TV to the soundbar, the audio gets flattened and the soundbar has relatively little to work with. I'd have to question the fidelity of most TV outputs as well.
If you look at the C450's display when a toslink device starts to push audio to it, it'll say either PCM, D.D, or DTS depending on the bitstream. D.D and DTS are generally not going to happen through a TV.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sandpd
On another function, can someone expound on the DRC function for me? I understand the concept but the manual is lacking in explaining what appropriate settings to use, i.e., for low volume at night. I have played around with the MIN, STANDARD, and MAX settings, but I can't discern any difference from one setting to the other.
DRC stands for "Dynamic Range Control." I don't understand it fully myself so somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but DRC is specific to Dolby. If you are listening to music and press that button, it is not going to make any difference as it only matters with Dolby Digital bitstreams. It essentially has the same purpose as "Smart Sound" but lets you pick between different dynamic range profiles set by the content creator. Though... I'm not 100% sure and I haven't messed around with it too much quite yet.
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Now I just received this soundbar yesterday and haven't had much chance to mess around with it yet after setting it up, but there's a minor, yet really annoying issue with the PS3.
Let's get a few things out of the way, first:
-PS3 is connected to the TV via HDMI and to the HW-C450 via optical.
-PS3 settings are set to output video and audio to the respective hookups.
-"Key Tone" set to "On"
-Key Tone is the click sound the PS3 makes when you move between items and lists within the XMB.
-The issue in question only happens with optical going into the Samsung unit.
When I play music or hover over game icons, run blu-rays or just about anything else within the PS3, audio plays as one would expect. The
only exception is that the Key Tone isn't heard.
Despite the setting being "on," the clicks aren't audible on the soundbar unless:
-Sound is already playing, like when hovering over a game with it's splash music playing. The Key Tone is audible when moving off of it.
-I'm scrolling very fast through a very long list to the point where it zips along into a constant sound.
Also, when moving between items within the PSN store, those clicks (different from the XMB's key tones) are actually audible, but I only hear the latter half of that sound on individual clicks. If I move quickly between items, the first click sounds very different (and muffled) from the rest.
After some searching, I found posts on the Playstation forums of people having similar issues with the PS3's optical out to their audio systems. It seems that some audio systems are too slow to respond to short sound bites. I noticed that the HW-C450 fades in and out with every new sound change in shift in audio settings. It's possible the Key Tone brief enough where it starts and ends before the Samsung unit even thinks about playing it.
I dug through just about every setting I could and I was only able to make it slightly better. I used the Video section in the XMB since I have a bunch of files there; scrolling top to bottom I was originally only able to hear a single click at the very end. My IPS panel on my TV doesn't noticeably lag so I'm able to get away with setting the soundbar's AV SYNC setting to 0ms. In that case I was able to hear a bunch of clicks right before the very end of that same Video list. The default AV SYNC was 50ms and I found it odd that setting it to 0ms not only changed the delay, but also how much sound gets
cropped.
I bet if there was some way to remove the fade-in feature of this audio bar, I'd actually be able to hear the key tones. It may sound trite to many, but I
like the key tones and I really do appreciate the feedback it gives while navigating.
I don't suppose any PS3 owners have got this working? Please tell me I missed something.
I have the C-450 and I have my WDTV live and DVR hooked up to my TV through Optical cables is there anyway I can hook my XBOX Elite up to it? There are only 2 optical plugins on the back of the soundbar am I forced to unplug my WDTV Live's optical cable and plug it in to my XBOX every time or is there an easier way?
