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No sound on your TV? How to fix it

When a TV goes silent it is nearly always a setting or a cable, not a blown speaker. The sound is usually being sent to a device that is off, or the volume is down on the thing actually playing it. Work through these checks in order, from the quick ones to the rare ones, and you will almost always find it.

Start with the quick checks

Rule out the simple things first, because they catch most cases. Make sure the TV is not muted, and that the volume is genuinely up. If you use a separate remote for a soundbar or a streaming box, its volume is the one that counts, not the TV's. Check you are on the right input, since a silent HDMI input is often just the wrong source selected. Then give the TV a proper restart: Pull the power plug for thirty seconds and put it back. That one step clears a surprising number of sound glitches.

Check where the sound is being sent

This is the single most common real cause. Every TV has an audio output setting that decides whether sound comes from its own speakers or from something plugged in. If that is pointed at an external device, a soundbar, a receiver, Bluetooth headphones or the optical output, and that device is off, asleep or unplugged, the TV falls silent even though the picture looks fine. Open the sound menu and find the output or speaker setting, usually under Sound, then Sound Output or Speaker List. Set it back to the TV's own speakers to test. If the sound comes back, you know the fault is in the link to your external gear, not in the TV.

Is it one app, one input, or everything?

Narrow it down, because where the silence stops tells you where the fault is. If only one streaming app is silent but others play fine, the app is the problem: Force it closed and reopen it, or sign out and back in. If one HDMI input is silent but the TV's own apps have sound, it is the device on that input or the connection to it: Reseat the HDMI cable at both ends and try a different HDMI port. If every single source is silent, the fault is in the TV's own sound settings or its hardware, which the next steps cover.

Sound through a soundbar or receiver

If your sound normally comes from a soundbar or an AV receiver over HDMI ARC or an optical cable and it has stopped, the handshake between the two devices is the usual culprit. Turn both the TV and the sound device fully off, unplug them from power for a minute, then switch the TV on first and the sound device second. Make sure the HDMI cable sits in the port labelled ARC or eARC, because only that one carries the TV's audio back to the soundbar. Check too that HDMI-CEC is switched on, since ARC depends on it; each brand hides it under its own name, such as Anynet+ on Samsung, Simplink on LG, or Bravia Sync on Sony.

The audio format trap

Here is a subtle one that often follows a new soundbar. If the TV or the app is set to send a surround format such as Dolby Digital or Dolby Atmos, but the device receiving it cannot decode that format, you get silence rather than a warning. The cure is to set the TV's digital audio output to PCM, which every device understands. Look for a setting called Digital Audio Out or Digital Sound Output and switch it from Auto, Bitstream or Dolby over to PCM, then test. If the sound returns, the format was the problem, and you can leave it on PCM or match it to what your soundbar actually supports.

When it really is the TV

If every source is silent, the output is set to the internal speakers, and a restart has not helped, then the TV's own speakers or sound board may have failed. Our free TV Speaker Test plays a tone through the left and right channels one at a time, so you can hear whether one side, both, or neither is working. Silence on both channels in the test, with the volume up and the output set to the internal speakers, points to a hardware fault that is worth a service call. If you do hear the test tones clearly, then the speakers are fine and the fault is upstream, in a source, an app or an external device.

Questions people ask

If the speakers pass the test but the sound and picture do not line up, that is a different problem: Our Audio Sync Test shows whether the sound leads or lags the picture, and how to correct it.