Topic: Surround sound on the switch

Is anyone here using an AV receiver to connect the switch and get surround sound?
I am and have an issue with audio skipping a tiny bit when it goes from silent to a sound.
This is noticeable on the menus when moving slowly between options and also on Quick Draw on 1 2 Switch when the word FIRE is often not heard due to the preceding silence.

@Talkshowhost

Are you connected via HDMI?

Yes, via a 4k capable cable too.

Somehow I feel like the Switch has better audio than Wii U. At least, my speakers say so

It is 5.1 PCM, which is good to be honest. Some Wii U games were in 5.1 PCM too though.

@Talkshowhost

Unfortunately, with HDMI there can be an issue called a "handshake". This is a short delay in the sound coming through the system. I have a DVD player hooked up to my receiver via HDMI, and if I am playing a CD that is encoded with HDCD, the first few seconds of the first song will be inaudible. Also, if I try to skip to a specific song on a CD encoded with HDCD, the first few seconds of the song I skipped ahead to will be inaudible.

Unfortunately, when this happens, there is not a way to get rid of the handshake while using HDMI. Analog (i.e. red and white composite cable) is the easiest way to get by this problem.

I have my Switch and other electronics hooked up through my receiver with HDMI and haven't encountered this problem, although I have this problem with my Apple TV. Since the Switch is strictly HDMI I don't think it's possible to connect it through optical or RCA. Maybe try playing around with the settings on your stereo and hopefully it can go away.

On another note I want to say that I hope Nintendo makes all of their games surround compatible since the Wii U really fell short in that area. The console supported surround but almost every one of their games were strictly stereo. To get the system to use all of my speakers I had to default the Wii U to stereo and let my receiver emulate surround.

@RazorThin

The thing about HDMI handshake is that you don't know what brands or models are going to experience it.

You must have a different brand receiver than @Talkshowhost. Who knows, his/her receiver might not have the handshake issue with Apple TV. It is very frustrating, to me at least.

There's a topic on this very issue on the Nintendo.com support forums.
https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/social/questions...
You're def not alone... apparently a good amount of us are experiencing this issue... Nintendo has yet to address it, hope they do soon

Solution:

I don't know if this will work for other receivers, but a guy in a gamefaqs thread on this issue with a Sony receiver did a reset to factory default on his receiver, and then his Switch began using 5.1 correctly.

I can verify this as a solution. I also have a Sony receiver (different model from the gamefaqs poster) and did a reset on mine (by holding down the power button for about 10 seconds) and low and behold, it is properly sending out 5.1 LPCM that the receiver can work with.

I strongly recommend taking note of all your speaker level, distance and eq/compression settings, as this will make re-calibration much much faster.

No clue as to why this works, but it does... at least for some receivers.

Hope this solves it for everyone else that was experiencing this oddball l/r/c issue in setups that were properly recognizing many other components.

Correction:
The previous post is only a temporary solution... I just discovered that upon powering off the receiver and powering it back up, the Switch is back to only being seen as left/right/center

So I reset to factory again, and again the switch does surround fine, and I powered down again and the switch surround is broke.

So this method ONLY works (at least for my receiver, a Sony str dh520) upon a fresh factory reset of the receiver... as soon as you power down, the switch will not re-establish 5.1

Updated solution for Sony receivers (as explained on gamefaqs and Reddit):

Change the hdmi settings in the receiver from "tv and amp" to just "amp"
Viola. 5.1 LPCM from switch perfectly working.