if i listen to music or watch dvds, my sub functions normally. however, when watching tv it seems like the sub fades in and out. lemme explain:
during commercials the bass will just kick in...the commercial will be half over and all of a sudden it seems like the commercial suddenly has bass. i used to brush this off to the fact that commercials don't spend that much money on surround sound and thus it's a poorly encoded commercial. but today as i was watching the nfl, as it was going to commercial and the "theme" song was playing, bass just seemed to randomly kick in.
any suggestions? like i said, it works normally for music and dvds, just tv seems to act funny. is this normal?
You sub sounds like it is normally in standby mode... waiting for a LFE signal to wake it up and play low frequency tones.
Most TV audio broadcast, does not really have LFE tones. However commercials do broadcast typically in Stereo and about 4db LOUDER than the standard broadcast show. It may be that one of two things are happening to you....
1) Your subwoofer is having a longer time to leave "standby" mode and get into "active" mode.
2) The LFE signals on these commercials appears half way into the commercial.
BTW, once the sub goes into active mode they typically will stay "active" for a few minutes and then downshift into "standby" mode.
Try a test... reach around to the back of the sub and flip the switch that puts it into standby mode to OFF so that it stays active. Then listen to some commercials and see what shakes....
finally got around to working on this (lamp on DLP went out and had to wait on a new one..ugh!) on the back of my sub i switched the only switch back there from Auto to On (which i assume is the same as the standby switch you're referring to)...i'll report back my findings...