TV Soundbars

[Torper]

While I'm sure that my hearing isn't quite as good as it used to be, it gives me few problems except when watching TV dramas when all too often i find speech difficult to understand.  I have a fairly new Panasonic 40" TV with the usual flat rear facing speakers and I'm considering buying a soundbar of some kind to see if it will achieve a greater clarity of speech from the TV.  As it is the quality of speech that is important, i'm not worried about high levels of bass or indeed volume.  I have tried an LG soundbar and a Yamaha soundbase and while both improved the sound to a certain extent neither of them did much for the clarity of speech, so they went back.

 

So I wonder if anyone has any recommendations for something that will improve speech quality on TV?  I'm currently considering the Azatom Stealth Bar AZHD1 which gets excellent reviews on Amazon (but little is said about speech quality).

 

DT

[brianusa]

We bought one for the same reasons and as we had a Samsung, we bought a Samsung soundbar for any compatibility reasons.  It came with a bass speaker which boomed nicely in music.  However, depending on the programme, it is best disconnected as it tends to muffle speech.  I find certain shows to be more susceptible to distortion especially low voiced dramas; the news, movies and other talk shows are OK.  Also some accents suffer and having been brought up on various English accents, even I find some Northern dialect hard to comprehend.  I often wonder what American viewers must make of it.  I must have been here too long as I don't have the same problem with American shows!!

 

Brian.

Edited June 12, 2017 by brianusa

[Arthur]

 

We've got a Sony sound bar and bass woofer with our Sony LCD. Yes, it does improve the sound. Occasionally I play the sound through the Hi Fi, which is even better.

 

However, it has it's limits. The problem is not just with the speaker system, it's the god awful level of diction and dialogue in modern dramas. Your speakers can play someone mumbling and muttering as clear as a bell, it's still mumbling. I'm not sure that any sound system will fully overcome that problem so I fear you might spend money without fully resolving it.

 

In extremis, we resort to the subtitles.

 

.

[peter220950]

I think a lot of it isn't down to hearing loss, though like you I have some difficulties, but it's the actual programmes, otherwise all programmes would be equally unclear.

 

As a thought have you investigated the settings on the TV? Our Samsung has different settings for music, speech etc. which have do give more acceptable output for some settings.

 

I will be interested to see how you get on, it's something I hadn't thought about before, but as you note the sound is coming out behind the set and then bouncing around in the void behind, it should increase clarity, though sadly not the quality of many of the programmes!

 

Peter

[john new]

Agree with the comments above, especially about mumbling.

 

We have a sound bar at home on the main TV, a separate speaker for the smaller TV and we bought my elderly mother a Blaupunkt sound thingy. Of the two my mother's thingy that looks a bit like an upside down black flowerpot I think works better than the bar but all three are better than the original TV sound. Sadly as she lives 300 miles away I can't easily get the part number for mother's unit.

Edited June 12, 2017 by john new

[HSB]

I have a Bose Soundstage which gives me excellent sound quality but as Peter220950 said it is usually possible to customise the sound settings to a certain extent if you go into Set Up. Often, though, the problem lies with the way the sound on a programme was mixed in the first place!

[Paperlad]

I bought a Canton DM55 two weeks ago and I'm very impressed with it.

 

Here's a link to a review of it.

 

https://www.whathifi.com/canton/dm-55/review

 

Although I do not have hearing difficulties, the voice clarity is much better than the TV speakers. If you go to the manufacturers web site and check the technical spec. there are a number of pre sets to use for voice enhancement, there's also some, built in, electronic wizardry that increases speech clarity. Not cheap tho at £330.

 

I also considered the Sonos Playbase but they are almost £700!.

 

PL.

[Ozexpatriate]

Also some accents suffer and having been brought up on various English accents, even I find some Northern dialect hard to comprehend.  I often wonder what American viewers must make of it.  I must have been here too long as I don't have the same problem with American shows!!

I'm with you there Brian. I never lived in the UK, but in my formative years watched a lot of British TV.  I find some of it quite hard to follow nowadays.

[jjb1970]

Sound bars are usually a huge improvement over the screen speakers for a relatively modest outlay. We got a pretty good Sony sound bar bundled with the TV we have in our living room as part of a black friday deal and it transforms the sound.

[Daddyman]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2017/feb/20/flatscreen-tvs-actors-or-realism-whats-to-blame-for-ss-gbs-mumbling-problem

[pH]

Switch on the subtitles. My wife has problems with the sound on UK shows on Canadian and US stations. We tried separate speakers, without much improvement, so we now use the subtitles. 

[Torper]

However, it has it's limits. The problem is not just with the speaker system, it's the god awful level of diction and dialogue in modern dramas. Your speakers can play someone mumbling and muttering as clear as a bell, it's still mumbling. I'm not sure that any sound system will fully overcome that problem so I fear you might spend money without fully resolving it..

 

That I fear is the main problem, and having read all the very helpful replies to date I feel that a soundbar, however good, may not solve the problem of inaudible dialogue.  The Yamaha soundbase that I tried had excellent reviews and certainly gave a much fuller and richer sound, but it did little to improve the dialogue.  Headphones gave a slight improvement - I used them when watching Amazon's "Man in the High Castle" where without them I found almost everything that the Julia Crane character said to be incomprehensible - but they're a bit antisocial!  Subtitles can be helpful, but I've found with foreign films that the English subtitles tend to give only a synopsis of what is said and, of course, they require absolute concentration on the screen which means that I can't build kits and watch TV at the same time.  The other main problem is that my wife does not want anything that requires yet another remote and further complicates the workings of our smart TV!

 

On the other hand, one of the virtues of the internet is that I can buy something from a company like Amazon in the sure and certain knowledge that if I don't like it, for whatever reason, I can return it and get a full refund, so it might be worth a try.

 

DT

Edited June 13, 2017 by Torper

[Brush47337]

I second the suggestion of sub titles.

i am 50pc deaf in one ear and lost everything in the other 8 years ago after a virus.

 

subtitles are the answer - and after a few weeks they are not noticeable at all (except live broadcasts where the lag can be tiresome) but still worth it to catch key words i miss (albeit 5 seconds later).

 

my family got so used to "my subtitles" they now all prefer watching with them on as so many shows have background music and noise that drown out the speech. and then their is the mumbling.

 

we even go to cinema screening with sub titles.

 

or you could try wireless headphones - but unfortunate they mute the sound to the room - so only good if watching alone.

 

stuart

[Two_sugars]

I just wish they had put as much into sound quality as they have into picture quality.

 

I have a Bose Solo 5 which I also use to Bluetooth my ipad through . . .wasn't cheap, but very good.

 

 

John

[Arthur]

 

To help prove the point about poor diction being the problem;

 

I'm sat here now listening to the 15 Minute Drama on Radio 4. It's being played through our flat screen TV in the kitchen using the inbuilt speakers, nothing extra at all.

 

Because the actors are speaking clearly and with some projection I can hear every single word by every cast member as clear as a bell.

.

[Enterprisingwestern]

I have the perfect solution, I don't watch TV!

 

Mike.

[DougN]

Ok I had a thing about the decent sound from the TV after hearing in a shop a Polk energy bar, it was caulk and cheese to the old tinny sound speakers I. The old Sony 32". Now last year my lovely purchased a 50" Samsung which I tried the speaker on but the Bluray I wanted to ply just wouldn't. It turned out it was a setting on the player. But this was found after a new Samsung sound bar was purchased.

 

So if I was to go through all this again I would stick with the energy bar it was the clearest for all sounds.

[stewartingram]

I agree about the recording quality, if that isn't right then you can only get round it by bodging.

But as for soundbars, a definite no-no from me. They seem biased towards bass, and are often referred to as "boom boxes", which is very apt. As for stereo, how on earth can they give true stereo effect when L & R speakers are so close together?

The speakers on a flat screen tv are also rarely large due to the shape of the case, so must suffer from quality issues. In fact my last tv was terrible, so much so that I connected it via the home audio unit, which has 5 speakers around the room and gives "surround sound" (BTW I'm not a hi-fi nerd, but being into electronics as a trade am aware of quality issues and like a reasonable performance from the kit). Since we changed the tv a couple of years ago, the Samsung replacement is a lot better; the audio system (must be 16-17 years old) is still connected but not used as much with the tv. As said earlier, there are setting on the tv, you really should investigate those as they are probably not optimum out of the box. Indeed, if like me, they may have been set up at the shop by a salesman - who often goes for effect (the boom-box factor for instance). I always choose the tv from a working display rather than buy one sealed in a box, comes from older days when a proper tv engineer would set it up for display, and soak test it before sale!

 

Stewart

[DougN]

Oh forgot to mention the Samsung sound bar was about half the cost of the "energy bar"

 

Stewart, you do get a similar 3D sound. It is not really comparable to a 5.1 system. I also say that the number of people commented on the sound clarity from the energy bar. It is best to go and listen to it in a store before purchase.

[Guius]

There has been a lot of criticism levelled against especially the BBC for the repeated mumbling during the historical drama based on the life of Thomas Cromwell recently, the response was to assure us that there was no problem with the recording or transmission of the programme  it being purely  a modern  acting/directing 'style'. Modern or not I lost the thread of the plot and gave up, and the problem is still with us I fear. It's either 'Celebrity Voice Come Dancing in the Jungle Love Island' or a half decent historical drama you can't hear. Now were did I leave my ear trumpet!

 

Best

Guy

[Torper]

Yes, I think the mumbling style is relatively new (and, IMO, to be deprecated).  It doesn't seem to happen on the older dramas I view through ITV3 and the Drama channel, nor very much on films. 

 

Doug, I hadn't heard of an energy soundbar, and the few that I've now seem are almost all above my £200 spending limit.  One that just squeezes in is the Acoustic Energy Aego Sound3ar - the few reviews that there are seem to suggest that it does offer greater dialogue clarity so it might be worth giving a go.  One snag is the pathetic little remote which Spouse is certainly not going to like (you can't use the TV remote).

 

And for those of you who enquired, yes, my TV does have sound settings and they have been set to speech, which effectively increases the treble and decreases the bass settings.  It makes a slight difference, but not enough.

 

DT

[Dr Gerbil-Fritters]

I tend to watch everything with subtitles.  Especially useful in series like The Wire, where I didn't understand a word of the dialogue as it was all in urban patois.

[Jonboy]

We have one of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/Goodmans-Channel-Soundbar-Speaker-Subwoofer/dp/B00QE9RNNS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1497375527&sr=8-2&keywords=goodmans+sound+bar . It has made the sound much clearer on films and the bass is adjustable.

 

What we didn't check before hand was if our TV to had any form of output socket for sound....it doesn't have a headphone socket, phono, rca, or optical so the soundbox is only useful with external devices.

[DougN]

Ok I know I spent a heap more than 200 quid on both the sound bars I have. Have a look at the Plok brand... the more important thing is to go and listen to them!

 

I think if you can stretch to a larger budget you will find TV enjoyable again in the same way a new pair of glasses an make films enjoyable agai when you can see them!

 

Good luck.