Audio problem on my parents' setup

[mikeymikec]

My parents have a Panasonic wide-screen 32" LCD TV and a Panasonic Blu-ray player (connected via HDMI). They use the latter these days to play audio CDs as it means one less piece of equipment taking up room.

A long story short, I noticed that when playing audio CDs, only the left audio channel is coming through. I tried resetting the audio options on the TV, disabling anything remotely clever and audio-related on the BR player (surround, dolby pro logic type stuff), FWIW swapping HDMI cables and using a different HDMI connection on the TV.

Also, when I connect a laptop to the TV, (using either HDMI cable or socket on the TV) both audio channels are played back fine, using the same audio CD in the laptop.

One other really odd thing is that the TV has a audio balance setting (which is normally set to the centre balance), and if I play with the setting (setting it to extreme left or right), it makes absolutely no difference to the audio output from the BR player.

I have exactly the same BR player in my home (however I have a different TV), and it works absolutely fine in this respect.

The only thought that has just sprung to mind is that I believe the BR player has a firmware update to do (I discovered this on mine when I temporarily connected it to the network but I haven't done the update). My player is newer than theirs though so mine might have a newer firmware version.

Otherwise I may try tedious things like trying their BR player with my TV and vice versa. I have one other thing to try which is to disconnect my dad's pre-amp from the BR player (the problem occurs regardless of the audio going to the TV or the pre-amp).

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

[richaron]

I'm gonna assume DVDs and Blu-rays play back fine in stereo..? I would guess it's a problem with the BR player since the TV can't tell what the source disc is. So maybe a new firmware will do.

I can't really help and hope someone can come answer for you. But I would be curious to know:
1) If the analog audio output from the BR player is the same.
2) If the BR player can read a data CD, maybe some photos and/or mp3s.

 

[mikeymikec]

1) Yes
2) I haven't tried an mp3 CD.

I don't know whether DVDs and BRs are affected in the same way, I only noticed the right channel was missing because The Jackson 5 - 'I want you back' lacks the backing vocals entirely without the right channel, so I knew there was something definitely missing and began investigating.

 

[giantpandaman2]

Check the audio cd settings on your BD player. It seems like it's set to mono.

 

[mikeymikec]

Check the audio cd settings on your BD player. It seems like it's set to mono.

There isn't an option for mono, but also if it was downmixing to mono in that way it would be doing it incorrectly.

 

[mikeymikec]

A firmware update fixed the problem.