Atv4 & Bluetooth earphones lag

Question

Atv4 & Bluetooth earphones lag

I have an Appletv4 and Beats wireless2 earphones. When I pair them the audio is out of synch with the video. Surprisingly the audio is slightly before the video, for example, I hear the bat hit the ball when watching baseball a split second before I see it happen. When watching basketball I hear the crowd begin to cheer when a basket is scored slightly before I see the ball goes through the hoop. I connected Jaybird Bluebud Xs and the same problem. Watching a movie the audio synch is so annoying as to make the Bluetooth earphones unusable. Is this normal?

Posted on May 17, 2016 1:33 PM

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Answer 1

May 17, 2016 2:59 PM in response to All Day Breakfast

Not sure if this will help, but try setting the ATV audio output to Stereo, if not already.

This thread airplay lagging describes the same problem; audio coming earlier than video. Not sure if there was any solution.

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Answer 2

May 17, 2016 3:17 PM in response to Diana.McCall

I wonder if there's something slowing down your video. You're getting audio diectly from ATV, while the video is being sent to the TV and decoded there.

Is ATV directly connected to TV by HDMI?

Is video resolution set to auto, or to a normal resolution that the TV supports?

What is the TV make and model? Is it a 4K TV?

Can you try using the TV speakers, and see if the sound is in sync then?

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Answer 3

vazandrew

Level 8

40,840 points

May 17, 2016 3:34 PM in response to All Day Breakfast

That is not normal. Try rebooting ATV. Repair the headphones.

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Answer 4

May 18, 2016 7:46 AM in response to Diana.McCall

I tried setting the sound to Stereo but that didn't help. I can't think what could be slowing down the video signal other than the inherent latency of the time taken for the video signal to travel to the tv but if this were the case everyone would have this problem and searching the Internet on the problem I did find lots of complaints about youtube and occasional complaints about latency with various laptops and Bluetooth eaphones but nothing about AppleTV so I assume the problem is mine.

I have the tv (B&O Play V1, not 4K) connected to the ATV4 via hdmi. I even found a forum on B&O Play TVs and mention of AppleTV4 but nothing about Bluetooth synch problems. I tried changing the resolution from the default Auto setting to both 1080x60 and 1080x50 but no change. Using the TV speakers audio and video are in sync. I also tried using AirPlay from my iPad to the ATV4 with Bluetooth earbuds connected and had the same out of sync problem.

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Answer 5

May 18, 2016 8:10 AM in response to All Day Breakfast

OK, so it works fine using the TV speakers. That means the TV is decoding the audio and video streams together, and compensates for any small delay between them.

When you use bluetooth, ATV is decoding the audio, while sending the video on to the TV. For some reason the TV takes a little longer to decode and display the video. Have you checked for a TV software update?

There doesn't seem to be much else to suggest. There's no provision for sync compensation in ATV.

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Answer 6

May 18, 2016 8:18 AM in response to Diana.McCall

I agree with your analysis. I did check for TV updates and I'm up to date. In fact B&O have updates for their remote's PUC to control the ATV4 from the B&O remote and B&O make a big deal out of ATV compatibility (ATV3 can be placed inside the tv chassis where I have it now and control it with the B&O remote) so I'm doubtful this is a general problem. Next step, Apple genius bar. The frustrating thing is I was quite happy with my ATV3 but needed bluetooth to listen at night and not disturb my neighbours. 😟

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Answer 7

May 18, 2016 8:23 AM in response to All Day Breakfast

Right. Of course B&O aren't too concerned about bt headphones, since they have a pretty good sound system. Bad luck for you.

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