Sky HD audio cf. Amazon Fire Stick

firstborn · 24 Jul 2017 at 20:40

I've long thought the audio from the Sky Box was quite 'quiet' and nothing like the quality you get from a disc. However I've just bought a Fire Stick and the difference is immense!

I have a Denon AVR-X5200W into Q acoustics 3020s and 3010s and a Dahli sub. Both sources send audio over HDMI.

Anybody else think the Sky audio is somewhat lacking? If not what am I doing wrong.

jpaul · 24 Jul 2017 at 21:21

if you have an a/v amp do you know what format got sent from the firestick for nowtv ?

I have alway thought audio quality was poor off of nowtv from a roku 3 via hdmi.
Video is only 3.5Mb/s 720p so I thought the sound was just 128Kb/s aac stereo (no multi-channel) which is close to what Iplayer offers,
with a real sky box (check the bitrate websites) you get 384Kb/s multi-channel 5.1 via satellite, so should be much better than nowtv !

lude1962 · 25 Jul 2017 at 16:29

there was a sky box update a while ago after which volume appears reduced

Kol · 25 Jul 2017 at 16:47

My Sky box is massively quieter than my PS4 and noticeably quieter than my Apple TV.

firstborn · 25 Jul 2017 at 17:52

Seems a common/normal thing then. Only really an issue when I crank up the amp for the Sky box and forget when switching to another source

Puzzled · 25 Jul 2017 at 18:03

Sky sound quality on anything but HD is awful, they seem to have changed it so you no longer get the big volume difference between SD and HD channels by making the HD channels quieter.

Means everything is just too quiet and gives you a nasty shock when you change source.