Not all cable channel's sound come through digital coax output on a Pioneer VSX 516

[midiman77]

The coax digital sound out from the cable box is going into the digital coax input of the a Pioneer VSX-516-K receiver. Sound comes out only on some of the channels. NBC, ABC, and some others won't come through, but C-span and some others do. When I add the analog cables, the receiver switches to the analog inputs on the chanels I don't hear on digital. It still stays digital on the rest. I could live with the switching, but the digital out channels are 10db louder than the analog channels. Also, my dvd recorder's sound outut is connected via digital coax. It passes sound from a factory disk, but not from a disk that recorded a program on a channel that I can't hear through the cable box's digital out. Any idea what is happening and how to fix this? Obviously I would like all the sound to come through the coax. Thanks.

 

[MDS]

It sounds like everything is working normally.

'Digital Cable' STILL doesn't mean that all of the channels have digital audio (at least not for me with Time Warner Austin). That is why receivers have the auto switching from digital to analog outputs. The volume difference is another fact of life and is no different than when commercials are 10+ dB hotter than the regular programming. Some receivers have volume offsets (like Onkyo IntelliVolume) but even that won't help because it works between different inputs (like Video 1 vs DVD) but not between different programs coming from the same source.

As for the DVD recorder, it sounds like you don't have analog connections to the DVD recorder. You didn't specify how it was connected to the receiver but I can infer from the description that it is connected digitally, possibly from a digital output on the receiver. If that is the case, it will never work because receivers will not convert an incoming analog signal to digital and output it over the digital output.

 

[jhanley]

I had the same problem with my cable box (SA8000) from
Comcast. It was connected to my AVR via digital coax and I
only got the digital channel audio. I called Comcast and
they said both digital and analog should come over the
coax connection. They swapped the box and now both
digital and analog come over the coax.

Check with your cable company, you might have a bum box.

 

[MDS]

I've dealt with Comcast in South FL where my sister lives and their knowledge of digital cable is right around zero. It should be rather obvious that analog signals cannot be output over digital coax.

At least in FL, Comcast does not broadcast any analog channels. With their digital cable all channels, except the movie and movie channels, broadcast 48 kHz PCM which will be output over the digital coax.