u/Tomcat848484

Picked up the gold edition on sale a few days ago and am enjoying it a lot! Entered this area and just had to stop for a minute and try the photo mode for the first time.

TLDR: Samsung hw-n950 Soundbar has recently developed an issue where it will have these short high pitched noise "artifacts" randomly come up during Dolby Atmos playback, as heard in the video at approx 7 and 13 seconds in. Feel like I have tried almost everything I can think of other than replace the soundbar. Anyone ever experience a similar issue and fix it?

Longer version:

Bought this soundbar in late 2018. It's been working well ever since. The baseline setup is an NVIDIA Shield Pro connected to an HDMI splitter that splits towards the TV (LG B2 from 2022) and towards the soundbar. Most Atmos content is played through Kodi. It worked great for years.

I messed with all Kodi passthrough settings and wasn't able to get anything to improve. Thought it might be Kodi so I went to Disney+ and started Rogue One with Atmos. It pretty quickly had the same kind of artifact. I replaced the HDMI splitter with a new, different model. No change. I thought maybe some of the cables were going bad so I tried different cables (including bypassing the in house cable in the wall to go from the Shield up to the TV on the wall). No change. Updated Shield Pro to latest firmware/software, no change. The Shield Pro replaced my old Shield earlier this year so I thought maybe there was an issue with the entire Shield. I brought out my old LG UHD Bluray player and hooked it up directly to the soundbar and TV (bypassing the splitter and the wall cables altogether) and played an Atmos audio bluray. Same issue. I hooked up the TV only to the soundbar through ARC and played Rogue One from the TV built in OS Disney+ app. Same issue. Only thing is I cant find where I've put my old Shield to give that a try but it seems excessive at this point given the TV and Bluray experience.

So I feel like I've eliminated the following possible culprits
- Kodi
- Shield Pro
- HDMI splitter
- Cables (unless ALL my cables are bad. Can cables that have worked fine for multiple years "degrade" and become bad?)

I'm at the point where the only thing left that I can see is a problem with the Soundbar itself, unless anyone else has any ideas?

I also tried a DTS:X demo file, no problem. All other normal stereo / 5.1 content has no problem. It only occurs when playing Dolby Atmos.

I do "feel" (not very scientific) that some files it happens quicker than others but not really sure what to make of it. For example I watched the first 7 minutes of S1E1 of Andor on Disney+ and had no problem. I start Rogue One on it and it happens within the first 30 seconds.

If I remember correctly the first time I noticed this it was maybe about 2 or 3 months ago and it happened like twice at the end of a 2 hour Dolby Atmos music file being played through Kodi. Now though it happens more regularly and within the first minute of playing that same file. So it seems to have gotten worse over time.

The one thing I haven't done is update the firmware on the soundbar because many people were reporting issues developing after software updating and so I always figured "if it aint broken dont fix it". So I guess I could still do that, I just don't understand why it would go from being fine to suddenly not fine and then the software would fix it.

But other than doing that that: any thoughts or suggestions?

Thank you!

I didn’t see Fimy post these (unless I’m blind) so I figured I would. I just took screenshots in the YouTube app, not sure if there’s supposed to be a better quality source.

I want the imperial commando one as a playmat!