What Shield TV audio settings do you use?

[justinrh 174]

What audio settings do you use on your Shield and why?

I know I don't know what to do with these:
- "Match Dolby/PCM Audio Levels"
- "Match Content Audio Resolution"

Why would I want to use either of the above?

(Sometimes I think vendors make settings just to make settings!)

[Luke 37095]

How is your experience with leaving them at defaults?

[justinrh 174]

LOL  I was just thinking about that today.  I don't recall what all the defaults are, and the ones I have flipped I haven't really 'tested' them, so I can't say.  And then you have all the different scenarios with different media where it may or may not affect your experience.

[HiveHivemind 1]

Signed up to help on this one. Breaking it down:

Match Dolby/PCM Audio Levels

Every digital audio is PCM, from the basics, but encoded differently. One of its encodings approach is Dolby Audio, this having reference audio levels (volumes) for home theater listening, which is a quite old standard nowadays albeit used. They scope 85dB average, 105dB peaks in any satellite speakers (front left/right, central, side left/right, surround left/right). This setting will set any and every digital audio source (PCM) being passed through (or decoded) and level it to Dolby reference. It can help improve the dynamic range by using a standard. Netflix content has narrow reference levels and by matching Dolby it gets closer to the dynamic range of it, for example.

Match Content Audio Resolution

You might be familiar with the high-resolution audio term or going through Windows Audio Settings and seeing CD-quality, DVD-quality, and Studio-quality as audio quality options. As an industry standard, CD is the equivalent of 44.1kHz at 16-bit PCM audio, while DVD is commonly 48kHz at 24-bit, and Studio is 96kHz - 192kHz at 24-bit. It illustrates how many times per second it can sample (x times 1000 Hz) and how much data it can hold (2¹⁶ or 2²⁴ different numbers representing data per sample). High-res audio starts beyond 44.1kHz at 16-bit and the term is normally used for 96/24 or 192/24.

This option will not touch the audio resolution (sampling and bit depth) and just pass it as-is via HDMI to the input device, assuming the connected device supports it (not every does).

 

I have both enabled. I'm running the Shield in an LG CX and a Samsung Q950A and both support the most common high-res lossless audio formats, although the TV only via passthrough since by itself it caps at 44/16. I passthrough all the data digitally through the TV to the soundbar that, then, decodes it and converts to analog.

Hope that helps.

Edited February 5, 2023 by HiveHivemind