PS3 audio problems...with a happy ending (of sorts)

Okay, so let me paint the picture. I’ve had my PS3 since the February following launch and I’ve never had any real problems with it. I've sent my Xbox in twice, but nary a complaint from the Sony hardware. Until recently I’ve gamed about equally on both platforms. Since I started playing Persona 3 FES, the Playstation has been getting a lot of extra play for long periods of time. Five or six in the evening until have not been unusual. Anyway, all was working well for years now. But, this evening the sound from my PS3 died. Great picture, no sound. The sounds from the satellite, DVR & Xbox 360 were all working fine. So, what gives? Ugh, was it broken? Had I played it too much recently and it over heated to the point of failure? Maybe it was something else. God, let it be something else because I’d go nuts if I had to shelve Persona for however long it takes to get one of these things fixed. Plus, I wasn’t looking forward to spending the cash for the repairs. It’s a 60 gig fully backwards compatible model, so I wasn’t going to except a modern rig as a replacement. But anyway, like many people, in times of crisis I turned to the web. All I can say is “wow”. I never knew so many people had the same problem.

There was an abundance of complaints and advice for fixes from all sorts of websites. So, I started with the official forums at Playstation.com. Someone detailed how to reset the video and audio by holding down the power button for 5 or 10 seconds, then restarting the system and following the onscreen guide to instruct a PS3 to utilize the HDMI cable. I reset everything to “automatic” since I was using the single HDMI cable option. My sound system was hooked through my TV, so optical audio wasn’t an issue. But, it was all for naught. Still, the console remained silent. Ack, I’ve got blu-rays from Netflix that need watching. How am I going to do that if I can’t hear anything? Do they make silent movies on blu-ray yet? Well, back to the net for further advice. Another site mentioned making sure the BD/DVD audio wasn’t set to bitstream. So, I returned to my home theater set up and corrected that in hopes that it could sing once again. But, no dice. My PS3 remained silent. Finally, I came across someone online who not only had the same problem I was experiencing, but the same type of TV. You see, my old TV died a couple of weeks ago and I picked up a Samsung 32’ 550 LCD for a reasonable price. It has 3 HDMI ports, a computer connection and other junk I’ll likely never use, but hey, that’s progress. Well, this is what I read…

“I have a Samsung LCD LN-40A450C1HXZA. I was not getting any sound on my HDMI inputs. I would get a picture but no sounds. I called Samsung at 1-800-726-7864. They instructed me to power off my TV and reverse my HDMI cables. I did this for both my cable box and Xbox and it worked. They said if the problem continued that I may need a firmware update.” http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/55099

Hmm, “reverse my HDMI cables”. That’s wacky, but what have I got to lose at this point. I mean my next option is playing phone-tag with the service departments at Sony and Samsung, and I certainly wasn’t looking forward to that. But >>happy day<< it worked.

Suddenly, I could hear the audio from old Uncharted trailers on the hard disk. Movies played again, and most of all, the sweetness of the intro song from Shin Megami sang loudly. Ah, the sweetness of life. Anyway, that’s my story and I thought I’d share it with you in case any of you run into a similar problem. Of course, this still means at some point in the future, I’m probably going to need to update the firmware on my TV, but I’ll worry about that tomorrow.

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