Terrible TV sound?

[Ed_Dinning]

Hi Folks, I agree that the background musak is a distraction, but do other people find it superposition of a sound spectrum graph an annoyance ~ why?
The random "Bessel function" graph that is also sometimes shown on the screen is also an annoyance

Ed

[peter scott]

Watching another female newscaster this evening who also gave distorted voice I wondered if the difference between presenters is in the positioning of the microphone. If the microphone is actually in contact with their naked chest does the mechanically transmitted vibration distort the airborne voice in a nasty rasping way?

Peter

[BusyBee]

It's my experience that modern TV set sound is pretty poor. It's maybe not that digital sound systems are any better or worse, I just think it's building down to a price. With our set a bit of fiddling with the settings sorted things quite a bit but I still hear the distortion. That said, I have come across big differences between programs, channels and adverts. Some do seem very distorted.

I did get an improvement using an external sound system, which I think was overcoming many of the set's limitations but not the transmitted signal. It failed though and it does not warrant replacement.

As a side issue the problem with out of sync video and sound is really annoying at times. I am not at all sure that recent improvements(?) have done us proud.

Tracy

[Pye Man]

The sound volume on the new GB News channel was very low when it started. With all the link-ups using Zoom or whatever it was really hard work. I don’t know if it has improved any since.

Generally, I notice volume varies a lot more than it used to between stations and programmes. I did wonder, when I was cranking the sound up to 48 when I was used to having it on 20-something, if I was going deaf. It used to be only the ads that were noticeably noisier.

I watched a gardening programme last Sunday morning and the sound quality varied from item to item but as some of the presenters are still off-site in their own gardens it’s glorified camcorder stuff and probably as good as it gets. A few weeks ago, one of the experts credited his young daughter with operating the camera and she was listed in the rolling credits at the end.

I’m not a great consumer of TV. I watch far more DVDs/videos. The TV is a ten-year old fairly small screen (by modern standards) Samsung and the sound quality seemed fine for ordinary viewing when I first had it so I never considered any add-on equipment. Perhaps it's one of the better models but I’ve never been bothered with getting cinema, etc., type sound. (The last time I went to a cinema I felt I should have taken ear plugs so I know I’m not going deaf!) My now departed neighbours added some sort of sound system to their TV and all of a sudden I was getting a lot of sound through the wall to the point where I did pass a remark about it.

[bobhowe]

Hi you can watch a Drama that you have to turn the volume up as some actors mumble and can not talk properly then the adverts come on with the loud irritating music in the background and you can not hear what the presenters are saying Currys pc world advert is the most irritating advert for that kind regards Bob

[Refugee]

You need an old audio system with a fast acting mute button on the remote.
Set top boxes have some of the slowest acting mute buttons on the market.

[Pye Man]

Things I really want to see on a commercial channel I often set to record so that I can FF the ads. This especially applies to channels like Yesterday* that seem to broadcast twenty minutes of ads per hour. As one gets older one realises that time is a precious commodity!

*Yesterday seems to have gone steadily downhill from when I first saw it around DSO. There must be so much interesting stuff in the archives but I suppose it wouldn’t get the viewing figures. I watch very little TV to the point where at my volunteer community project yesterday someone mentioned seeing a programme on the Smithsonian Channel. Assuming it was on Sky or somewhere similar I immediately replied that I only have Freeview and was told that it is indeed on Freeview. There seems to be some interesting stuff on there.

[BusyBee]

I find it very confusing at times because they keep changing things. I think that they may run different things in different areas too as I once came across one channel with something I would like to see and was annoid because it was pixelating with low signal. On moving up through the channels I came across exactly the same program on another channel / name which was Ok so perhaps from the local transmitter. Looking at the program lineup it was identical. I agree about the adverts too! They do seem to be getting longer.

Tracy

[Murphyv310]

Hi
As my Samsung set is 7 years old, last year I disconnected the internal speakers and wired them to a very good pair of Kenwood speakers. Brilliant sound now but yes that only sorts out the TV.
Funny as previously the volume was set at 16 to hear it at a comfortable level now its between 7 & 8. Those who are in control of sound on mainstream TV really need to go on a course set by a good old fashioned audio engineer to learn how to do it properly.

[Craig]

The US patent number for the ZVOX speech enhancer is 9,747,923 for anyone curious how the thing works.

Craig