Hissing S's

[paulramplin]

Hi,
I have a slightly annoying problem with my surround sound set up. In a nutshell, I can occasionally hear people hissing their S's. It doesn't happen all the time but when it does, it seems to happen throughout whichever programme I'm watching.
I presume it's something to do with how I have my speakers set up, but if that was the case, wouldn't happen EVERY time? I've been trying to narrow it down and so far I've only heard it on TV programmes played through my BT digibox (on E4, to be specific) which is connected to the receiver via HDMI.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
(For your information, I have an Onkyo receiver.)
Many thanks in advance,
Paul.

 

[theprinceofdarkness]

Its called sibelance. It is usually due to the programme source. Try cutting the treble a bit with your tone control or if you have one switch on the low pass filter.
Frank

 

[paulramplin]

Sibelance.... what a great word to describe hissing S's!
Thanks for the advice - I'll have a look to see if it helps.

 

[Sam Gangee]

It's actually called sibilance.

 

[paulramplin]

Can't seem to cure my sibilance. It's strange - it only seems to happen occasionally and (so far) only on terrestrial channels - DVDs/Blu-rays/streaming services seem unaffected. Not sure if this is because of the way they are broadcast. Any further advice would be most appreciated.

 

[Sam Gangee]

If it were FM radio I would suggest a weak signal. As it isn't, I'd guess your settings are wrong. Trying to use surround sound when the transmission is only stereo?

 

[paulramplin]

My receiver allows me to output stereo broadcasts as surround sound. I'd just assumed that because the receiver had this feature, then it would work fine and wouldn't be causing the problem. However, I'm now thinking it might be likely that I'm expecting too much. I'll have a look/listen to see if reverting the problem broadcasts to simple stereo will eliminate the problem.

 

[Lucid]

Check if the receiver is set to do any additional processing on top of the basic Dolby Prologue stereo-to-surround conversion. I have extra settings for Panorama width etc. Also make sure it isn't set for extra effects such as Hall or Arena etc.

 

[paulramplin]

Thanks all. Life has got in the way of properly trying to sort things out but I will tackle it soon. All advice has been much appreciated.