Hi, I wonder if someone can help me please. I have a Sony BDP5200 Bluray player running it's most up to date firmware. I just bought some DVDs to watch on it (yes I know I could have got the Bluray versions) and on some of them the sound dips in and out usually when I start watching it and then improves after a while. The DVDs I bought are all television shows with multiple episodes on and the issue seems to occur either right at the start or at the end of the disc. I thought maybe the lens needs cleaning but having read up on it, apparently the lens should never be cleaned as this can potentially damage it. I'm assuming (maybe someone can clarify this) that the main reason for the sound issues is because the sound quality on a DVD is not as good as on a Bluray and it's just something I have to live with? If not, has anyone got any ideas of how to fix it? Thanks.

Have you tried playing the discs on another kind of player (DVD player, computer?) just to make sure it isn't the encoding of the audio on the discs which is at fault?

No I haven't tried that, I'll give it a go, thanks. I should also have said that I did get one Bluray as well and that works ok.

I just installed the official Windows 10 DVD player on my PC, inserted one of the discs that the sound was skipping on and it seems to be fine. I'm not really sure what this means though. I don't really want to have to use my computer just to watch DVDs on so if there's some way of getting it to work on my Bluray player it would be much better.

Is it just the audio that is affected or do you get picture disruption as well. It would be an unusual fault that affected just the audio if it was something like the laser assembly.

The other thought is that it could be whatever you are listening to the disk on that is causing the problem. To confirm this you would need to swap your Blu Ray player for something else and play the disks on there. Or plug your player into another system and play the disks.

That way you can determine if it is the player or the audio system you are using that is causing the problem.

Another test you can do is dive into the menus of the Sony player and select PCM Stereo (or LPCM - same thing) as the audio format if it is not already set to that. Play the disks again and see if you get the same problem. If not then it could be something to do with whatever audio format the disks use which is causing the audio system problems. PCM stereo is basically a lowest common denominator format that every audio system should handle with ease.

The Bluray player is connected to my television via HDMI, I get no issues with sound when watching television, it is just the sound that skips not the picture, and only does it on some of them. I'll check the settings in the menus regarding the audio format, thanks.

Here's a list of the available settings in the Audio Settings menu, what they are set to and what the other choices are:

Digital Audio Output is set to Auto, the only other setting is PCM
BD Audio Mix Setting is set to On, the only other setting is Off
Dolby D Compatible Output is set to On, the only other setting is Off
Audio DRC is set to Auto, the other choices are On or Off
Downmix is set to Stereo, the only other choice is Surround

I haven't changed any of these settings since I got the player so it is in it's default configuration (not sure if this helps, just thought I'd mention it).

Try setting the Digital Audio Out to PCM and see if that has any effect. Though if it was some oddity with the audio format I would expect it to affect any disk you play, unless there is something particularly "special" about these disks.