Will a soundbar help me? (struggling to hear TV dialogue)

forgotmyname

SONY LSR200...    Amplifies speech..  Bought one for my Mum and she loved it so thought I would try it myself and
it is great for those shows where they have quiet speech and then loud effects.

missile

womble12345 said:

I have a LG 43UK6300PLB TV, it is basically a 2018 model that I bought for £300 so its bottom of the range. I struggle with hearing the dialogue/speech on some shows so I turn the volume up and then when an action sequence occurs and you get explosions the volume is too high and my wife moans at me so I am constantly juggling the volume up and down. Will a soundbar help to highlight the dialogue? If so what features in a soundbar do I need to prioritise to get?

I had exactly same TV, bought a £150 LG sound bar and was very disappointed with the result. I sold the TV and bought a Samsung smart TV which has much better picture quality and found I no longer needed soundbar

womble12345

Thanks everyone for the replies. I found that someone in the family had turned off 'Clear Voice' on the TV so I have turned that back on and will give that a try for a while

I did look at some soundbars that were for sale on Prime Day but I am unconvinced they will help, for all the reviewers who say they improve the dialogue there are just as many saying the opposite, so I will stick with the TV speakers for the time being and see how that goes. I will certainly look into that Sony LSR200 if I am still struggling in future.

Thanks for all your comments.

JustAnotherSaver

I've not read through the thread. I've purely gone off the thread title so just letting you know beforehand....

Im not deaf but there were bits of dialogue in TV shows or movies here and there where I'd annoy my wife my rewinding as I couldn't make out what they said. 

I got a Sonos Beam soundbar. Not for this but just because I wanted better all round sound. 

It didn't help. 

What does help is subtitles. I have them on for everything. 

And I'm still happy with my soundbar purchase. 

matelodave

I've got a Sony Surround Sound system which although pretty good, just cant compensate for poorly recorded TV shows. or mumbling from the actors. So be wary of lashing out a lot of money on stuff that might not solve your problem.

Making it louder doesn't necessarily make it better, it needs a bit of signal processing to enhance the speech component and raise it above the background, especially if the music is overloud or intrusive.

I still have to increase the volume on my hearing aids to avoid deafening my wife and she still moans at the poor sound quality of some programmes.

Headphones do improve it somewhat but they do have to be plugged in  directly rather than bluetooth which can introduce a significant and really annoying delay between the video and sound, which is even more irritating.

A low latency bluetooth transmiiter and low latency headphones can reduce the delay but it doesn't eliminate it  entirely so it can still be noticeable 

rachel6188

Another idea is buy a Bluetooth headset or I have the Samsung buds+ and use them for sound surrounding me. I'm deaf in my left ear x

Neil49

JustAnotherSaver said:

I've not read through the thread. I've purely gone off the thread title so just letting you know beforehand....

Im not deaf but there were bits of dialogue in TV shows or movies here and there where I'd annoy my wife my rewinding as I couldn't make out what they said. 

I got a Sonos Beam soundbar. Not for this but just because I wanted better all round sound. 

It didn't help. 

What does help is subtitles. I have them on for everything. 

And I'm still happy with my soundbar purchase. 

I've also got the Sonos Beam and although the sound is quite impressive I agree with you that it doesn't help with the speech much even with the speech setting set to on. 

Some tv programmes have poor quality sound and there's not a lot you can do about it. 

Stompa

Zvox make dialogue enhancing speakers and soundbars which use hearing aid technology to improve clarity:

https://zvox.com/

I've no idea how effective they are, but would be interested to find out.

Olinda99

matelodave said:

I've got a Sony Surround Sound system which although pretty good, just cant compensate for poorly recorded TV shows. or mumbling from the actors. So be wary of lashing out a lot of money on stuff that might not solve your problem.

Making it louder doesn't necessarily make it better, it needs a bit of signal processing to enhance the speech component and raise it above the background, especially if the music is overloud or intrusive.

I still have to increase the volume on my hearing aids to avoid deafening my wife and she still moans at the poor sound quality of some programmes.

Headphones do improve it somewhat but they do have to be plugged in  directly rather than bluetooth which can introduce a significant and really annoying delay between the video and sound, which is even more irritating.

A low latency bluetooth transmiiter and low latency headphones can reduce the delay but it doesn't eliminate it  entirely so it can still be noticeable 

Just to say you can use wireless headphones without any lag at all but not bluetooth - go for wireless headphones. No price difference.

JustAnotherSaver

Neil49 said:

JustAnotherSaver said:

I've not read through the thread. I've purely gone off the thread title so just letting you know beforehand....

Im not deaf but there were bits of dialogue in TV shows or movies here and there where I'd annoy my wife my rewinding as I couldn't make out what they said. 

I got a Sonos Beam soundbar. Not for this but just because I wanted better all round sound. 

It didn't help. 

What does help is subtitles. I have them on for everything. 

And I'm still happy with my soundbar purchase. 

I've also got the Sonos Beam and although the sound is quite impressive I agree with you that it doesn't help with the speech much even with the speech setting set to on. 

Some tv programmes have poor quality sound and there's not a lot you can do about it. 

I think there's more to it than that (at least for my case) - as my wife doesn't have a problem hearing / making out the dialogue part of what we're watching.

She doesn't mind subtitles because she's used to it now, but she doesn't need them. She did get annoyed when I kept having to rewind.

I don't mind subtitles as I like classic 1980s martial arts movies so I'm used to them also.

What I think it is, and I've absolutely nothing to back it up, is that I sit on top of an engine all day for work. The droning noise of it I suspect has caused me to be hardER of hearing for the lower notes.

Similarly, my wife has a job with high pitched noises (medical - drills) and she struggles on that side of the scale. We'll be out and about & you may hear something really high pitched & i'll cover my ears as it goes right through me, yet she can't hear it or barely hears it.

Just a theory. I could be way off the mark.