Weird issue. LG SK4D Sound Bar - quiet noises being muted.

DKOH

New Member
I just got this sound bar today and I'm looking to ask for your knowledge of audio to pinpoint what may potentially be wrong.

I have the soundbar hooked up to my TV via a digital optical cable. It love the sound when I'm gaming or watching stuff. However there is one thing that bothers me, and it only seems to be present at the OS menus of my gaming consoles, Xbox One X and Switch. You know those menu sounds, the little "beep boop" sounds that come from simply navigating the console's OS? Well after about 2 seconds they mute. For instance say I'm playing Smash on Switch, sounds is gorgeous, then I press Home and I hear the little jingle it makes. When I move the highlighted selection I hear the little boops, about two times, but then it goes away. This is only if I move directly after the initial jingle sound. If I wait, I don't hear anything at all. Other sounds from selecting menu entries make noise, but they're almost strained. The same goes for my Xbox. I adjusted the audio to stereo (it's a 2.1ch set) and I tried switching the ends of the cable. Same thing.

It's almost as if there is a time threshold to each sound that isn't being met and thus the speaker doesn't play it. These little sounds are like 1/20 of a second long. The longer sounds play. But not these.

It's a really hard situation to describe. It's minor but it's driving me crazy and I'm thinking of taking the set back, but I wanted to ask here for some advice before I do that.
 
Hi, welcome aboard! While this board tends to deal with more audiophile kit like receivers and speakers, I’ll take a stab at it.

Assuming it’s not something in your console settings or your TV’s, it seems to me like there’s an internal muting circuit in place, probably to block out whatever white noise is present in the soundbar’s circuits or your TV’s (which should be absolutely none if it’s built right). Try your TV speakers and see if the issue stays the same. Seems really quite peculiar, and probably a shoddy coverup of some really lame electronics. I’d recommend returning it, in all honesty. Even for a soundbar, that’s pretty lame.

For <$100, you can snag yourself a nice small $30 Lepai mini-amp, and some nice $60 Dayton or Micca bookshelf speakers. Audio gear hasn’t changed much over the years (some of the most respected stuff’s from the 50s!), and that $100 could go even further on the used market, like...ridiculously far. Use the TV headphone out to the amp, and you’ll have something that’ll play much louder and cleaner than the soundbar ever could at a fraction of the space-and hear every note and jingle!
 
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OMG! I'm having the same exact problem with mine. It's driving me nuts. It's 100 percent the sound bar. I had it originally hooked up to a TCL Smart TV and it was doing this on the menu screen for my TCL TV, my Xbox one X and Nintendo switch. I noticed when playing Zelda BOTW and Zelda Links Awakening it the sound would kind of fade away during quiet parts of the game. It's highly annoying. I can't find any support on this either. There is a firmware update for the sound bar but it doesn't do anything. The internal TV speakers don't act like this. I just purchased a 55 inch nanocell tv and used the same sound bar on it with the same results. The sound fades in and our during quiet periods on screen, so annoying.
 
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