QLED Televisions: Update 1410 Still Causing Soundbar Issues

[Brian7]

Is there an update when the eARC soundbar issue will be fixed? Since the failed, and then removed 1402.5 firmware update broke it there are still customers with ongoing issues.

While the new 1410 update fixed many issues caused by the 1402.5 update, owners are still reporting problems with Samsung soundbars on the 1410 firmware when using eARC.

Please reference this thread regarding the 1402 sound issues and reports that 1410 is still having the eARC issue with Samsung soundbars: QLED Televisions: Update 1402.5 Causing Soundbar/Home Theater Connection issues 

The following have commented in the above thread as still having issues even with the 1410 update: @userf9EwX44ulM @MattyDaddy76 @Tony15 

Fortunately, I never updated to 1402 or 1410 but I would like to know when this issue is going to be resolved.  And not with a "work around".  There is no reason anyone paying top dollar for the 2023 "Flagship" S95C and a Samsung soundbar should be having to use a workaround.  

I do not understand how this issue which started on March 15th with the 1402 update still has not been 100% fixed almost two months later.

This entire situation will give me pause before making any significant purchases from Samsung in the future.  Please give us an update.

Thank you

[userf9EwX44ulM]

You're right of course Brian7, however at this stage there has been no (1410) update in Australia. This experience will definitely influence my next purchase, it has just taken too long to fix. 

[lab7]

1410.1 is available OTA in Australia, at least my S90C got it a few days ago. I also managed to get 1410.0 installed on my set somehow, around mid April. Things had improved slightly with that iteration but apparently it had to be quickly withdrawn as it was still causing issues. Therefore not too many people were able to install it.

With the current one I am still not completely convinced. I watched a few episodes of Fallout on Prime (Atmos) for a few hours and I think I only had one dropout during that time and even here I am not 100% sure if it wasn't my imagination... Nonetheless we have reports that the sound issues are still present in one form or another.

Samsung has definitely dropped the ball with this update. It looks like they're not sure what to do to patch it up?

[Tony15]

It was a choice between buying an LG or a Samsung. What a mistake! 

BTW, this thread has the change logs for all the Samsung releases. The 1410.1 change log has been requested - we'll soon be able to see what it is supposed to fix: https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/tv/tv-firmware-changelogs-on-german-community/td-p/1846870/page/...

When I chatted with support about my eARC problems they said this about the 1410.1 I'd just installed:

[Tony15]

Thought i’d try it with the senneheiser ambeo mini. eARC bounces all over the place. Much worse than the Q700C. 

[Tony15]

I factory reset the tv via the hospitality menu, and went through the setup again without any hdmi plugged in. Now when the ambeo mini is plugged into earc, earc is currently behaving itself. Been an hour so far. 

[userlU6GzpQHMf]

Is it still happening on the built-in apps? or apps through the ott device?

I have the S95C and Q990C soundbar but no longer experience the audio dropouts. If there is a particular setting/setup/environment that still has the dropouts, I can try it out on my end to see if it also happens.

[Tony15]

It was happening all the time for me in live tv and apps, whether using a samsung q700c or the sennheiser ambeo mini soundbar with 1410.1. I then decided to factory reset my tv and it seems to have been ok since then. I’m (pessimistically) expecting i’ll have to reset it again though. I reset it via the hospitality/secret menu but probably a reset via the standard way would work just as well.

[Tony15]

The useful thing about the Sennheiser Ambeo Mini is that the ‘phone App shows which codec is being used. If I use a live TV channel which is not using the Dolby Multichannel format, with eARC auto and format auto, then the soundbar will still occasionally cut out. With the Dolby multichannel format it does not seem to cut out.

[CSEngineer]

To throw my experience into the mix...

I bought a 77S90C just a few weeks ago and it shipped with 1310 firmware. I have a 2023 Denon receiver connected via E-ARC, and noticed a strange behavior. With EARC enabled it was either Dolby Atmos or PCM 2.0, nothing in-between. I have all my other sources connected to the receiver so it is only Netflix/Amazon/Disney/etc. here, but there are Atmos to Dolby Digital examples. IF I disable EARC, letting it fall back to standard ARC, then Dolby Digital+ (7.1, 5.1) bitstream works, but not Atmos.

I figured maybe this was fixed in an update. There was no update from the TV menu, but the website listed 1410 so I updated via USB stick. I'm seeing this might have been a mistake.

NOW Earc is COMPLETELY useless, not even ATMOS works anymore, it is entirely PCM 2.0 if I enable it. Gratefully standard ARC still works with DD+ 7.1, so Atmos signals downgrade, and everything else works. It is very frustrating though that for as much as I paid for this TV, that something like this is a problem, and clearly from the threads about it, this has been a problem for a while.