Poor tv Sound, and how to improve it

[Fretbuzz]

We use a Sony soundbase - like a soundbar but bigger and the TV sits on it. Really neat and helps a lot.

Might have used the main stereo but the TV is off in a corner and not between the speakers.

Cheap one in eBay here - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/38705824...pid=5338728743&customid=&toolid=10001&mkevt=1

 

[cctaylor]

A soundbase would suit a 32" TV well. As TVs have got bigger they are much popular and the choice new is more limited. Likely to be plenty on the second hand market but check out the connection options before you buy.

 

[Mike Reed]

F.w.i.w., I've suffered from poor upward and rear-facing (how silly !) spkrs on my 12y.o. Sony for years as my hearing ability and discrimination lessens. A few months ago I embarked upon an experiment. I bought a cheap Auna r/c amp, decent I/Cs and initially coupled a pair of very cheap (part of an old combi) spkrs. I substituted these for a pair of TDL Nucleus bookshelf spkrs I had. Vast improvement. Downside is that with all this plus the Virgin box on my TV table, it's rather heavy to drag out of the way when having a music session.

Previously, I used a long Chord I/C to my hifi-attached can amp, so for anything needing clear diction, I used cans. I put in a passive switch box, so now can avail myself of both ways + TV only. My Sony does have RCA outs but newer TVs have other forms which I don't understand.

If your mum (?) watches by herself, why not some cans directly into the TV, but I guess you've covered that one.

 

[Eyebroughty]

Biggest improvement I made to my tv sound and particularly speech intelligibility was to hook it up to an AV amp and use a centre channel speaker as well as a stereo pair. Pretty much all the dialogue then comes out of the centre speaker, it’s much much easier to understand especially as you don’t have to sit dead central, and the bangs and music and sound effects come out of the stereo pair. I’m sure a pair of rear speaker would make some movies even better, but I haven’t got space. The big big difference is a center channel speaker and an AV processor with all the Dolby magic. Remember that most movies nowadays have some kind of 5.1 soundtrack; even if you mix that down to stereo you lose a lot.

Hi,

The main issue with any program, and this has been stated in a few posts above, with a musical background or without, the speech is mumbled and the person(s) are not able to articulate what they are saying.

One other issue is why do they make films and TV drama in low light, some you would think were filmed down a coal mine.

The above quoted post is about as close as you can get to having clear dialogue with maybe some form of graphic equaliser used with other setups.

I use the toslink out of a Sky Q box into a Linn DSi then into a pair of Shahinian Super Elfs, have even tried Arcs and Compasses, the same applies for each, slight improvement in sound but not much, I can also use headphones, Beyer DT880's and they do make things a little better.

Basically the sound and lighting in TV these days is not like it was in days past, I was told by one technical person it is all to do with the bandwidth that TV now takes up and the amount of stations available on the TV frequencies, am sure some of the more techincal members will be able to expand on this.

If you want to hear what an old style TV program was like with actors that could articulate properly and the background sound and lighting done properly try an episode of Sherlock Holmes with Jerremy Brett, they are available on ITVX.

Cheers

John

 

[adamdea]

Due to my wife's failing health, there's a need to make the TV clearer to hear without having to resort to subtitles.
So, are soundbars the answer, or active speakers?
Please feel free to talk to me like a baby, as tech stuff has passed me by.

I'm not really sure what your circumstances are -as in budget, space, whether the tv can go into your stereo in the same room etc.
What you could do, for example is take an output from the tv (which could be anlogue, optical or hdmi) and send it to your stereo, via a dac. That would probably help.
Alternatively you could put in a dedicated sound bar.
top end- you get a proper A/V amp and various speakers up to arbitrary levels of complexity and price.
The main point is that if you have a dedicated centre channel to take dialogue you can then turn it up louder than everything else. It is a common complaint that dialogue is mixed too low relative to sound effects these days.
The take home points are
1) pretty much anything is generally better than tv speakers.
2) if you have a stereo in the same room you should be able to get an output to it somehow.
3) if not soundbars are quite good but probably best to audition if you can. I think soe of them will have setting to reduce dynamic range which could potentially make dialogue more intelligible.
4) full on surround is now absolutely brilliant if you like that kind of thing, since just about everything on netflix, amazon, apple, disney plus etc is encoded with it these days. And if you have a dedicated centre channel you should be able to turn it up. (in principle this shoud be the case even with stero if it is converted to pro logic etc.
.

 

[Ian M]

Due to my wife's failing health, there's a need to make the TV clearer to hear without having to resort to subtitles.
So, are soundbars the answer, or active speakers?
Please feel free to talk to me like a baby, as tech stuff has passed me by.

I have a Sonos Arc and Sonos mini sub. Sound is excellent for all types of movies and normal TV stuff, especially speech. I am in a similar situation to you it seems, my hearing is very good but Mrs M’s hearing is not.
Here’s the thing though. In my experience with three or four members in the family with poor hearing, it doesn’t matter how good the sound quality is you will always need subtitles.
Probably like you in the beginning I hated subtitles and could not concentrate with them on. If you stick with it though, after a long time, you will learn to ignore them or read them as you wish and everybody is happy.

 

[cobbers]

it doesn’t matter how good the sound quality is you will always need subtitles.

Agreed - a substantial amount of what is on TV the audio is appallingly badly produced - I often have to resort to a BT headset.

 

[AndyU]

Most movies nowadays are mixed in Dolby 5.1 or Atmos or similar. The dialogue track is mostly mapped to the centre channel, and music and effects mapped to the others. A soundbar doesn’t separate the channels enough laterally to be much help for dialogue. Using stereo means that you mix dialogue with music which masks the dialogue as well as giving a poor result for anyone not listening dead-centre. A stereo will never do a mono signal as well as a mono speaker can do the same signal. Get Richer Sounds cheapest AV amp, and a center speaker for speech and 2 or 4 speakers for the rest. And sit close! Get immersed! Lots of people moaned about Oppenheimer being hard to understand. I am now ancient and didn’t have any problem (though the lip-sync needed tweaking). TV and movie audio is not made to be reproduced by a stereo.

 

[hifienthusiast]

I am using a pair of Q Acoustics active speakers connected to my TV via the optical output. Dialogue from TV programs is excellent through these active speakers. I highly recommend using active speakers costing less than £200 for TVs.

 

[Ian M]

It doesn’t matter how good anybody thinks their setup is, if you have poor hearing, subtitles are needed. All you can do with the right setup is reduce the problem.

 

[adamdea]

Most movies nowadays are mixed in Dolby 5.1 or Atmos or similar. The dialogue track is mostly mapped to the centre channel, and music and effects mapped to the others. A soundbar doesn’t separate the channels enough laterally to be much help for dialogue. Using stereo means that you mix dialogue with music which masks the dialogue as well as giving a poor result for anyone not listening dead-centre. A stereo will never do a mono signal as well as a mono speaker can do the same signal. Get Richer Sounds cheapest AV amp, and a center speaker for speech and 2 or 4 speakers for the rest. And sit close! Get immersed! Lots of people moaned about Oppenheimer being hard to understand. I am now ancient and didn’t have any problem (though the lip-sync needed tweaking). TV and movie audio is not made to be reproduced by a stereo.

quite agree- plus- it isn't just movies. Pretty much all the flagship "TV" dramas are in surround.
I remember being gobsmacked at the soundscape in some of the episodes of Breaking Bad 10-15 years ago.
stereo tv is like a wind up gramophone (and I suppose on this forum it is necessary to add in the qualification -and I do not mean that as a compliment)

 

[manicatel]

Poor quality & difficult to understand dialogue is by far the biggest complaint with modern tv’s.
It’s a combination of more background music, more special effects & poor diction of actors.
Add to this the fact that most people want thinner & thinner screens, which just means no room for decent built in speakers. All this adds up to a tinny thin sound. Turn the volume up to hear the dialogue & all you get is more background music & noise, nothing gets clearer or better.
The best Sony OLED TV’s do have a fairly good built in speaker system, but that’s the exception rather than the rule.
Modern TV’s don’t have analogue outputs, only digital outs, optical, hdmi etc.
Whilst a pair of active monitors will work really well, most people plump for a soundbar of some description.
Personally, I wouldn’t bother with a cheap soundbar, the upgrade over the tv speakers won’t be massive.
A Sonos Beam or Arc will make a massive upgrade & can be further improved with a Sonos Sub &/or surround speakers if you so wish over time. You can just use the TV’s own remote for volume control if you want.
Some people are sniffy about Sonos, similar to some people hating Apple products. But they are very good, reliable, stable & do the trick very well.

 

[les24preludes]

What’s the alternative, watching them without subtitles? Seems a bit limiting.

Depends on how many languages you speak......

In my case excellent French having lived there and good Norwegian having lived 6 years there. I'm tuning in to Swedish a bit better but it isn't totally the same. I recognise some basic German and Russian with subtitles but I couldn't watch without them.

Films with subtitles are a good way to brush up on your languages. Plus European cinema is more interesting to me than US cinema.

 

[Pravda]

I am using a pair of Q Acoustics active speakers connected to my TV via the optical output. Dialogue from TV programs is excellent through these active speakers. I highly recommend using active speakers costing less than £200 for TVs.

Hi, any chance of a link please.

This has started something in our house now. All of a sudden, I cant hear the tv properley now.

 

[Pravda]

Depends on how many languages you speak......

In my case excellent French having lived there and good Norwegian having lived 6 years there. I'm tuning in to Swedish a bit better but it isn't totally the same. I recognise some basic German and Russian with subtitles but I couldn't watch without them.

Films with subtitles are a good way to brush up on your languages. Plus European cinema is more interesting to me than US cinema.

My wifes the same, (loves almost any European film) which is a challenge for me, if we go to the cinema in Carteret

 

[gavreid]

Most movies nowadays are mixed in Dolby 5.1 or Atmos or similar. The dialogue track is mostly mapped to the centre channel, and music and effects mapped to the others. A soundbar doesn’t separate the channels enough laterally to be much help for dialogue. Using stereo means that you mix dialogue with music which masks the dialogue as well as giving a poor result for anyone not listening dead-centre. A stereo will never do a mono signal as well as a mono speaker can do the same signal. Get Richer Sounds cheapest AV amp, and a center speaker for speech and 2 or 4 speakers for the rest. And sit close! Get immersed! Lots of people moaned about Oppenheimer being hard to understand. I am now ancient and didn’t have any problem (though the lip-sync needed tweaking). TV and movie audio is not made to be reproduced by a stereo.

The modern tellies do process the sound and give options for sport, cinema, voice etc. They are very different to one another

 

[AndyU]

The modern tellies due process the sound and give options for sport, cinema, voice etc. They are very different to one another

But the speakers in modern tellies are also pretty awful, they don’t even face you in many cases - they point down, or back, or vibrate bits of the panel. A soundbar is an improvement, a proper 3.0, 5.0, 3.1 or 5.1 solution better still.

 

[gavreid]

But the speakers in modern tellies are also pretty awful, they don’t even face you in many cases - they point down, or back, or vibrate bits of the panel. A soundbar is an improvement, a proper 3.0, 5.0, 3.1 or 5.1 solution better still.

Sure. They're not as bad as they once were though.

 

[Fatmarley]

Thinking about active monitors - it's been around 20 years since I owned a pair, and that was connected to a PC.

How would you connect a pair to a TV? On the ones I just looked at, they had an XLR balanced input and TLR.

Also, how do you adjust the volume? The ones I looked at had a volume control on the back.

 

[paulfromcamden]

Thinking about active monitors - it's been around 20 years since I owned a pair, and that was connected to a PC.

How would you connect a pair to a TV? On the ones I just looked at, they had an XLR balanced input and TLR.

Also, how do you adjust the volume? The ones I looked at had a volume control on the back.

If you can connect to a headphone socket you just need a minijack to 2 x XLR cable. Simple enough. Then just use the remote for volume.