Ask AV Kart › Troubleshooting: HDMI & video
Troubleshooting: HDMI & videoMy AVR is on, the source is playing, but there's no sound from the speakers — where do I start?
Work the chain from the AVR outwards. In our experience this finds the fault in ten minutes, and it is almost never a dead amplifier.
The order I check in:
The AVR display first. Is audio actually arriving, and on the input you think you selected? Most receivers show the incoming format (PCM, Dolby Digital, and so on) on the front panel or the info overlay. If the display says nothing is coming in, the AVR is innocent and the problem is upstream. If it shows a signal but nothing plays, the problem is downstream, in the AVR's own settings or the speaker side.
The source's audio output setting. TVs, consoles and streaming boxes quietly reset these after a firmware update. A TV that was sending audio out over ARC can wake up one morning set to "TV speakers" and nobody touched it. Same for a console flipped from bitstream to something the AVR does not expect.
Speaker configuration inside the AVR. A past setup, or a curious relative with the remote, may have reassigned amplifier channels to Zone 2 or bi-amp mode. The front pair then has no amp assigned to it and the AVR happily plays to a zone that has no speakers. Look at the amp assign menu before you look at anything with a screwdriver.
Wire terminals at both ends. One loose strand touching its neighbour on a binding post can shut down a channel or trigger the AVR's protection mode entirely. Trim, twist, reinsert. Not glamorous, but it has ended more "my system is dead" calls than any menu.
Last, run the AVR's built-in test tone. If tones play from every speaker, the AVR and speakers are fine and the fault is entirely upstream: source, HDMI, or the source's settings. If tones do not play, you now know the receiver or wiring is the suspect and you have saved yourself an evening of poking at the TV.
Still stuck after all five? WhatsApp us the AVR model and exactly what the display shows while the source is playing. That one photo usually gives us a two-minute diagnosis rather than a two-hour one.
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