No Sound or Wrong Volume on a Display | easyCMS Digital Signage

Sound is the part of a signage install nobody tests until the day it matters. There are three separate volume controls in the chain and only one is inside easyCMS, which is why “there is no sound” is so rarely a CMS problem.

The three places volume is set

In the layout. A video widget carries one audio option, Mute videos that have audio, on or off. There is no volume level for video, it is either muted or it plays at whatever the device is set to. Audio files do have a level: an audio item, played on its own or attached to another widget from that widget’s context menu in the editor, takes a Volume percentage and a Loop setting.
On the player device. The Android box, the PC or the panel’s own processor has a system volume and mute. easyCMS has no setting for this anywhere, it cannot read the device’s volume and cannot change it.
On the screen. The panel has its own volume, its own mute, and its own choice of where to send the sound.

Good to know The quietest link in the chain wins. A widget at full volume is still silent on a muted panel, so always start at the panel. There is no master volume in easyCMS at account, display or layout level. Check the device and the screen first, that is where the sound has usually gone.

Start at the screen and the device

Work through these four in order. Most no-sound reports end at step 1.

Unmute the panel with its remote and raise its volume. A screen muted during installation stays muted forever, nothing upstream undoes it.
On Android, check the media volume. Press the volume keys while something with sound is playing, so you are adjusting media and not notifications.
On Windows, check both levels in the volume mixer while the player is running: the master and the per-app one. If the player starts under a different Windows account, levels you set as yourself may not apply.
Play something else on the device, through its own browser or media app, on the same screen. If that is silent too, the problem is the hardware and easyCMS cannot fix it.

The file may have no audio in it

A silent file looks perfectly normal in the CMS. Open it in a desktop media player and check its media information for an audio stream, many “export for web” presets drop audio entirely.

Where the track exists but only the picture arrives, the codec is often the culprit: broadcast and disc sources may carry AC-3, E-AC-3 or DTS audio that signage hardware may not decode. Re-encode to MP4, H.264 video, AAC audio at 128 kbps stereo, see Videos Will Not Play or Stutter.

HDMI carries the sound, unless something diverts it

Windows sends audio to its default output device. A screen on HDMI appears as its own device, and if Windows has chosen an onboard analogue or virtual one instead, the picture arrives and the sound does not. See Windows Player Setup.
An Android box with a 3.5 mm jack may route away from HDMI the moment anything is plugged into that jack, even a dead cable.
The screen is sending sound somewhere else. Commercial panels are often set to an external sound system, a soundbar over ARC, or a line or optical output, with the internal speakers off.
A cheap HDMI switch, splitter or extender will pass picture and drop audio. Test with one short known-good cable straight from player to screen.

Sound from one item and nothing else

This is what most shops and cafés want. Mute every video widget except the one that should be heard, including those in your default layout. Keep sound to one item at a time, two playing together mix into noise. Attached audio helps, because it plays only while its parent widget is on screen and stops when that widget finishes.

Loud at lunchtime, silent in the evening

easyCMS has no volume schedule, so build the difference into the content. Make two versions of the layout. Mute the video widget on one, or lower the Volume on the audio item. Then schedule each against a daypart: sound during trading hours, quiet in the evening. See Scheduling Content and Timezones, Dayparting and Schedule Accuracy.

Some panels and Android sticks accept mute commands from easyCMS. Which ones work depends on the make and model, and the command has to be set up first. Send us the exact model at Send a support request and we will configure it if yours supports it.

LG webOS panels

Smart-TV players use the panel’s own audio path, so the panel’s volume and mute are the whole story. The settings easyCMS can push to a webOS panel cover backlight, brightness, contrast and the remote and on-screen-display locks, not volume. If staff keep changing the sound with the remote, ask us to lock the remote for that screen. Where sound matters, an Android or Windows player feeding the screen gives more control than the panel alone.