optical out issues

Ive got a problem with the sound on my games im running it through optical out into 5.1 surround sound its been fine for about 6 months but now i don't seem to be getting the sound from people talking only back ground noise i changed the settings to run through the tv and it works fine and it does it on more than one game i think my optical lead is shagged wat do u think?

Are you sending the sound to a 5.1 home theater receiver system, or to a TV? If it's a TV, then maybe the TV might not be able to downconvert the signal to 2.0 (for a left and right speaker system). You can set the PS3 to output in stereo if this is the case (it's under "Sound" or "Audio Settings" on the XMB).

Thanks for replying the signal is being sent to the 5.1 surround system via optical and its been working fine for 8 months its not think i might try a new optical lead there pretty cheap.

Do you have a surround sound test disc, and does your receiver have a speaker identification test mode? If you could do both types of tests, then you might determine whether the problem is with your home theater setup or with the PS3 or optical cable.

You said you heard "background noise" instead of dialogue, which reminded me of the time I hooked my PS3 up to my sister's TV to watch Wall-E. My PS3 was set to output 5.1 surround (for my receiver at home), but her TV was only in stereo. It wasn't until halfway through the movie, when humans talk, that we realized that no dialogue was coming through. The TV was playing the surround noises instead, but no dialogue (the center channel track). I had to reset the PS3 audio output to stereo so that we could hear dialogue on her TV.

my receiver doesn't have surround sound on blu-ray if the audio is on pcm (or bitstream, i do not remember at the time), where i can only hear stereo from the optical outMondasM

Edited post - I edited this because I looked at the audio settings and discovered that you can set audio output for HDMI one way and optical the other, regardless of which cable is the currently connected one.

Set the "BD Audio Output Format (Optical Digital)" to Bitstream. The reason is that an optical cable only has enough bandwidth to support these types of sound formats:

• Dolby Digital 5.1 (a compressed bitstream signal)
• DTS 5.1 (a compressed bitstream signal)
• PCM 2.0 (uncompressed stereo)

If the audio output is set to PCM with an optical cable, then the PS3 will have to convert any 5.1 surround signals from a movie or game down to PCM 2.0, because the cable can't carry PCM 5.1 (it's not compressed). Your receiver may be able to matrix a 2.0 signal into a simulated surround signal for all of the speakers to play, but it is not really surround at all, it is only enhanced stereo.

By setting the output to bitstream with an optical cable instead, your receiver will be able to receive true 5.1 surround signals (DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1). With this setting, the PS3 can also pull out the 5.1 compressed core signals found in the new uncompressed 5.1, 6.1, and 7.1 soundtracks used on Blu-ray discs (Dolby TrueHD, DTS HD Master Audio), so you will get true 5.1 surround from all of those tracks, too. It will not be the original uncompressed soundtrack, but it will still be a huge improvement over matrixed stereo.

Then for "BD/DVD Audio Output Format (HDMI)", set it to Linear PCM. This is because the PS3 is not capable of outputting the new HD sound formats in bitstream format. By setting the output to PCM, the PS3 will instead decode the bitstream formats itself to uncompressed PCM for your receiver, with no loss in the number of channels or sound quality. Some people do get disappointed that their receiver does not show the proper name for the sound format on it's panel display (Dolby TrueHD, DTS HD Master Audio), because it is really getting PCM, but that is a minor quibble.

Maybe a easy solution. I own a 5.1 as well and noticed that I always get voice messages to the middle front, but once I have a headset activated, it goes there. Have you checked if you haven't plugged in any headset or you aren't sending them to the wrong destination (you can select it somewhere in the configuration)